There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!

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!

There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.

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

A wise man is not governed by others, nor does he try to govern them; he prefers that reason alone prevail.

High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.

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