There are some who speak one moment before they think

Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.

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.

Duty is what goes most against the grain, because in doing that we do only what we are strictly obliged to, and are seldom much praised for it.

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

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

Love seizes us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or our weakness favors the surprise; one look, one glance, from the fair fixes and determines us.