To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness, indeed.

Sometimes we lose friends for whose loss our regret is greater than our grief, and others for whom our grief is greater than our regret.

We are much mistaken if we think that men are always brave from a principle of valor, or women chaste from a principle of modesty.

Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference.

Men are not only prone to forget benefits; they even hate those who have obliged them, and cease to hate those who have injured them. The necessity of revenging an injury, or of recompensing a benefit seems a slavery to which they are unwilling to submit.

The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.

To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.