Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.

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.

Style is the dress of thoughts, and let them be ever so just.

Little vicious minds abound with anger and revenge and are incapable of feeling te pleasure of forgiving their enemies.

Pleasure is a necessary reciprocal. No one feels, who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please. What pleases you in others, will in general please them in you.

Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever. It implies a discovery of weakness, which we are more careful to conceal than a crime. Many a man will confess his crimes to a friend; but I never knew a man that would tell his silly weaknesses to his most intimate one.

Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.