We acknowledge that we should not talk of our wives; but we seem not to know that we should talk still less of ourselves.

Clemency, which we make a virtue of, proceeds sometimes from vanity, sometimes from indolence, often from fear, and almost always from a mixture of all three.

There are some persons who only disgust with their abilities, there are persons who please even with their faults.

I always say to myself, what is the most important thing we can think about at this extraordinary moment.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Solemnity is a device of the body to hide the faults of the mind.

Whilst weakness and timidity keep us to our duty, virtue has often all the honor.