King René of Anjou [(1409-80)]was a strange compound of amiable, great and trifling qualities. He was so excellent a sovereign as to acquire the surnom of the Good. He was brave in war, delighted in tournaments and wrote on them, instituted festivals and processions, partly religious and partly burlesque, was a fond husband, a romantic lover, a good painter for that age, and a true philosopher.

I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.

I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company.

I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.