Young people are dazzled by the brilliancy of antithesis, and employ it. Matter-of-fact men, and those who like precision, naturally fall into comparisons and metaphor. Sprightly natures, full of fire, and whom a boundless imagination carries beyond all rules, and even what is reasonable, cannot rest satisfied even with hyperbole. As for the sublime, it is only great geniuses and those of the very highest order that are able to rise to its height.

We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.

Make me chaste and To what excesses will men not go for the sake of a religion in which they believe so little and which they practice so imperfectly!

There is speaking well, speaking easily, speaking justly and speaking seasonably: It is offending against the last, to speak of entertainments before the indigent; of sound limbs and health before the infirm; of houses and lands before one who has not so much as a dwelling; in a word, to speak of your prosperity before the miserable; this conversation is cruel, and the comparison which naturally arises in them betwixt their condition and yours is excruciating.

The same common sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.

Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.

To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.