How much wit, good-nature, indulgences, how many good offices and civilities, are required among friends to accomplish in some years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute!

If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.

Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.

A man can keep another's secret better than his own. A woman her own better than others.

Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.

The mind, like all other things, will become impaired, the sciences are its food,--they nourish, but at the same time they consume it.

A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.