There is nothing which continues longer than a moderate fortune; nothing of which one sees sooner the end than a large fortune.

The very impossibility which I find to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.

The noblest deeds are well enough set forth in simple language; emphasis spoils them.

If a handsome woman allows that another woman is beautiful, we may safely conclude she excels her.

Some young people do not sufficiently understand the advantages of natural charms, and how much they would gain by trusting to them entirely. They weaken these gifts of heaven, so rare and fragile, by affected manners and an awkward imitation. Their tones and their gait are borrowed; they study their attitudes before the glass until they have lost all trace of natural manner, and, with all their pains, they please but little.

A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune; it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.

There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is meanness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom, which is prudery.