It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.

Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.

It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is anoptimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.

Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.

The New Year is the season in which custom seems more particularly to authorize civil and harmless lies, under the name of compliments. People reciprocally profess wishes which they seldom form and concern which they seldom feel.

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.

I sometimes give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.