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.

All the world says of a coxcomb that he is a coxcomb; but no one dares to say so to his face, and he dies without knowing it.

There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.

Caprice in woman is the antidote to beauty.

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.

Dissimulation, even the most innocent in its nature, is ever productive of embarrassment; whether the design is evil or not artifice is always dangerous and almost inevitably disgraceful.

You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you?