A man must learn to endure patiently what he cannot avoid conveniently.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

I had rather fashion my mind than furnish it.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

I do not believe, from what I have been told about this people, that there is anything barbarous or savage about them, except that we all call barbarous anything that is contrary to our own habits.

Some men seem remarkable to the world in whom neither their wives nor their valets saw anything extraordinary. Few men have been admired by their servants.

Experience has further taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by impatience.