Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.

Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshnessof a lake. There is no character in women's faces before the age of thirty.

Thought is the only treasure that God sets outside all power and keeps to serve as a secret link among the unhappy.

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

Conscience is a cudgel which all men pick up in order to thwack their neighbors instead of applying it to their own shoulders.

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.

The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.