Outward simplicity befits ordinary men, like a garment made to measure for them; but it serves as an adornment to those who have filled their lives with great deeds: they might be compared to some beauty carelessly dressed and thereby all the more attractive.

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.

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.

The most exquisite pleasure is giving pleasure to others.

Wit is the god of moments, but Genius is the god of ages.

One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.

When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it.