Cautiously avoid speaking of the domestic affairs either of yourself, or of other people. Yours are nothing to them but tedious gossip; and theirs are nothing to you.

Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.

We are really so prejudiced by our educations, that, as the ancients deified their heroes, we deify their madmen.

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.

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces; for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome.

Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.