Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

There is nothing which continues longer than a moderate fortune; nothing of which one sees sooner the end than a large fortune.

There are some souls so base and filthy that they love gain and interest as noble souls love fame and virtue, knowing one pleasure only, that of making money or of not losing it; anxious and avid for their ten per cent; entirely preoccupied with what is owed them; forever concerned about the depreciation or discredit of money; buried, and as it were engulfed, amid contracts, title-deeds and parchments. Such people are neither parents, friends, citizens or Christians, nor, perhaps, even men; they merely have money.

I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.

People reveal their character even in the simplest things they do. Fools do not enter a room, nor leave it, nor sit down, nor rise, nor are they silent, nor do they stand up, like people of sense and understanding.

Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.

A man reveals his character even in the simplest things he does.