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.

If to take up books were to take them in, and if to see them were to consider them, and to run through them were to grasp them, I should be wrong to make myself out quite as ignorant as I say I am.

I love a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigor of its communications.

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.

What a man hates, he takes seriously.

Virtue rejects facility to be her companion. She requires a craggy, rough and thorny way.

To how many blockheads of my time has a cold and taciturn demeanor procured the credit of prudence and capacity!