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

. . . long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in . . .

We like so much to talk of ourselves that we are never weary of those private interviews with a lover during the course of whole years, and for the same reason the devout like to spend much time with their confessor; it is the pleasure of talking of themselves, even though it be to talk ill.

The heart never becomes wrinkled.

The world has no long injustices.

I pity those who have no taste for reading.

We like no noise unless we make it ourselves.