Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind.

Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest ma to do.

It seems to me that the spirit of politeness is a certain attention in causing that, by our words and by our manners, others may be content with us and with themselves.

Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.

Men fall from great fortune because of the same shortcomings that led to their rise.