Commonplace minds usually condemn what is beyond the reach of their understanding.

We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.

Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it; so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.

We arrive at the various stages of life quite as novices.

Constancy in love is a perpetual inconstancy which fixes our hearts successively to all the qualities of the person loved--sometimes admiring one and sometimes another above all the rest--so that this constancy roves as far as it can, and is no better than inconstancy, confined within the compass of one person.

It is sometimes a point of as much cleverness to know to make good use of advice from others as to be able give good advice to oneself.

The first lover is kept a long while, when no offer is made of a second.