Genius always looks forward, and not only sees what is, but what necessarily will be.

How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves!

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

You deny that man is really so prejudiced as I suppose him; talk to him then of some foreign country, ask him what religion he is of.

Might not most men be as well named boys grown old.

Some women destroy all your sensibility towards them by their coldness, others by their heat.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?