Beauty is the true prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that our sex, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs.

I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself, as the nursing mother of all false opinions, both public and private.

It is easier to sacrifice great than little things.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

One man may have some special knowledge at first-hand about the character of a river or a spring, who otherwise knows only what everyone else knows. Yet to give currency to this shred of information, he will undertake to write on the whole science of physics. From this fault many great troubles spring.

Presumption is our natural and original malady. The most vulnerable and frail of all creatures is man, and at the same time the most arrogant.

The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.