The great charm of conversation consists less in the display of one's own wit and intelligence than in the power to draw forth the resources of others.

The pleasure a man of honor enjoys in the consciousness of having performed his duty is a reward he pays himself for all his pains.

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 is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent.

Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.

We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!