The nearer we come to great men the more clearly we see that they are only men. They rarely seem great to their valets.

An assembly of the states, a court of justice, shows nothing so serious and grave as a table of gamesters playing very high; a melancholy solicitude clouds their looks; envy and rancor agitate their minds while the meeting lasts, without regard to friendship, alliances, birth or distinctions.

The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

I am told so many ill things of a man, and I see so few in him, that I begin to suspect he has a real but troublesome merit, as being likely to eclipse that of others.

We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.