Our interests are grains of opium to our consciences, but they only put it to sleep for a terrible awakening.

Many fortunes, like rivers, have a pure source, but grow muddy as they grow large.

The wonderful fortune of some writers deludes and leads to misery a great number of young people.

Some delicate matters must be treated like pins, because if they are not seized by the right end, we get pricked.

To protect ourselves against the storms of passion, marriage with a woman is a harbor in the tempest; but with a bad woman it is a tempest in the harbor.

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.

What we gain by experience is not worth that we lose in illusion