What harm cause not those huge draughts or pictures which wanton youth with chalk or coals draw in each passage, wall or stairs of our great houses, whence a cruel contempt of our natural store is bred in them?

Gentleness and repose are paramount to everything else in woman.

If you have known how to compose your life, you have done a great deal more than the person who knows how to compose a book. You have done more than the one who has taken cities and empires.

One open way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like wine and love.

What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.

It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.