Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.

There are certain people who so ardently and passionately desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it.

Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.

Days, months, years fly away, and irrecoverably sink in the abyss of time.

It is often easier as well as more advantageous to conform to other men's opinions than to bring them over to ours.

High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.