Rarely do they appear great before their valets.

Praise, of all things, is the most powerful excitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains.

Every hour in itself, as it respects us in particular, is the only one we can call our own.

There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

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!