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

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.

The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.

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

One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

A guilty man is punished as an example for the mob; an innocent man convicted is the business of every honest citizen.

The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.