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.

Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and tells you the whole story of his death, which distresses her so much that she forgets not the slightest detail about it.

The doctors allow one to die, the charlatans kill.

The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects; it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect; it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.

It is the glory and merit of some men to write well and of others not to write at all.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

A coxcomb is one whom simpletons believe to be a man of merit.