In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.

I've met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.

To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once.

Amid this vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a grain of sand!

There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.

Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.

His tongue is by turns a sponge, a brush, a comb. He cleans himself, he smooths himself, he knows what is proper.