Were it not for the amusement of our books, we should be moped to death for want of occupation. It rains incessantly. ... we tickle ourselves in order to laugh; to so low an ebb are we reduced.

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: but Providence in kindness to us causes us to forget it. It is much the same with lying-in women. Heaven permits this forgetfulness that the world may be peopled, and that folks may take journeys to Provence.

There is nothing so lovely as to be beautiful. Beauty is a gift of God and we should cherish it as such.

The desire to be singular and to astonish by ways out of the common seems to me to be the source of many virtues.

matrimony is a very dangerous disorder; I had rather drink.

Nothing is so capable of overturning a good intention as to show a distrust of it; to be suspected for an enemy, is often sufficient to make a person become one.

The heart never becomes wrinkled.