La vraie e loquence se moque de l'e loquence, la vraie morale se moque de la morale. True eloquence has notime foreloquence, true morality has no time for morality.

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.

Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.

We have so exalted a notion of the human soul that we cannot bear to be despised, or even not to be esteemed by it. Man, in fact, places all his happiness in this esteem.

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects; so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.

There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches.

To make a man a saint, it must indeed be by grace; and whoever doubts this does not know what a saint is, or a man.