Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens to pass, but it is also true that every defect is allied to a perfection.

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Life is full of troubles and vexations, that one must either rise above it by means of corrected thoughts, or leave it.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.