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.

there are some people who never acknowledge themselves in the wrong; God help them!

. . .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.

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.

Oh Dear! How unfortunate I am not to have anyone to weep with!

Not to find pleasure in serious reading gives a pastel coloring to the mind.

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