Men are much more unwilling to have their weaknesses and their imperfections known, than their crimes; and, if you hint to a man that you think him silly, ignorant, or even ill-bred or awkward, he will hate you more, and longer, than if you tell him plainly that you think him a rogue.

A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.

If a marriage is going to work well, it must be on a solid footing, namely money, and of that commodity it is the girl with the smallest dowry who, to my knowledge, consumes the most, to infuriate her husband. All the same, it is only fair that the marriage should pay for past pleasures, since it will scarcely procure any in the future.

Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.

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.

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.

Vice, in its true light, is so deformed, that it shocks us at first sight; and would hardly ever seduce us, if it did not at first wear the mask of some virtue.