The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.

All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

I long remained a child, and I am still one in many respects.

Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. It is strange that these voices often contradict each other?

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.