We must always live in hope; without that consolation there would be no living.

We must always live in hope; without that consolation there would be no living.

[After being corrected by a grammarian for using the feminine pronoun instead of the pseudogeneric masculine:] As you please, but for my part, if I were to express myself so, I should fancy I had a beard.

. . . it seldom happens, I think, that a man has the civility to die when all the world wishes it.

If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.

the days, and the months, and the years, pass so swiftly, that I can no longer retain them. Time, in its flight, hurries me away, in spite of myself; in vain I endeavor to stop him, he drags me along: the thought of this alarms me.

. . .the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous. . . the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till today. . . I cannot bring myself to tell you: guess what it is.