Women are extreme; they are better than men, or worse.

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor and conscience, to obtain them: It is to pay so dear from them that the bargain is a loss.

Favor exalts a man above his equals, but his dismissal from that favor places him below them.

False glory is the rock of vanity; it seduces men to affect esteem by things which they indeed possess, but which are frivolous, and which for a man to value himself on would be a scandalous error.

A man who knows the court is master of his gestures, of his eyes and of his face; he is profound, impenetratable; he dissimulates bad offices, smiles at his enemies, controls his irritation, disguises his passions, belies his heartm speaks and acts against his feelings.

The same vices which are huge and insupportable in others we do not feel in ourselves.

Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die.