We seek our happiness outside ourselves, and in the opinion of men we know to be flatterers, insincere, unjust, full of envy, caprice and prejudice.

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!

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.

A tall, well-built man with a deep chest and broad shoulders can carry a heavy burden with ease and unconcern, and still keep one hand free; a dwarf would be crushed by half that weight. Thus lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.

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

False greatness is unsociable and remote: conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is. True greatness is free, kind, familiar and popular; it lets itself be touched and handled, it loses nothing by being seen at close quarters; the better one knows it, the more one admires it.

A woman is easily governed, if a man takes her in hand.