Excuse me, pray." Without that excuse I would not have known there was anything amiss.

The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not than in those who know it.

Kind words produce their images on men's souls.

All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.

I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.

If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.

Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same.