The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people-amongst whom your life is passed-that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire-for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a supreme care.

The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.

Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it were a faculty, like vision.

What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?

Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son's education, than leave it him in your will.