We study ourselves three weeks, we love each other three months, we squabble three years, we tolerate each other thirty years, and then the children start all over again.

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.

I wish to reproduce things as they are or as they would be even if I myself did not exist.

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.

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

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

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.