People of our time are so formed for agitation and ostentation that goodness, moderation, equability, constancy, and such quiet and obscure qualities are no longer felt.

The land of marriage has this peculiarity: that strangers are desirous of inhabiting it, while its natural inhabitants would willingly be banished from thence.

Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure.

It is not my deeds that I write down, it is myself, my essence.

Why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain.

In order always to learn something from others (which is the finest school there can be), I observe in my travels this practice: I always steer those with whom I talk back to the things they know best.

Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.