We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.

It is very rare to find ground which produces nothing; if it is not covered with flowers, with fruit trees and grains, it produces briers and pines. It is the same with man; if he is not virtuous, he becomes vicious.

Party loyalty lowers the greatest men to the petty level of the masses.

Eloquence is to the sublime what the whole is to the part.

When we are dead we are praised by those who survive us, though we frequently have no other merit than that of being no longer alive.

If a handsome woman allows that another woman is beautiful, we may safely conclude she excels her.

Some young people do not sufficiently understand the advantages of natural charms, and how much they would gain by trusting to them entirely. They weaken these gifts of heaven, so rare and fragile, by affected manners and an awkward imitation. Their tones and their gait are borrowed; they study their attitudes before the glass until they have lost all trace of natural manner, and, with all their pains, they please but little.