The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.

We meet With few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!

Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.

The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb.

Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.