Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position.

All men can bear a familiar, definite misfortune better than the cruel alternations of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive joy or sorrow.

Thanks to the toleration preached by the encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, the sorcerer is exempt from torture.

The greatest joy a petty soul can taste is to dupe a great soul and catch it in a snare.

Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind.

Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned.

People who climb from one rung of society to another can never do anything simply.