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

We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.

One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.

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.

We never deceive for a good purpose: knavery adds malice to falsehood.

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.

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