It is for little souls, that truckle under the weight of affairs, not to know how clearly to disengage themselves, and not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again.

All permanent decisions are made in a temporary state of mind.

Truly it is reasonable to make a great distinction between the faults that come from our weakness and those that come from our wickedness.

Women are not altogether in the wrong when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for men only have established them and without their consent.

Our skin is provided as adequately as theirs with endurance against the assaults of the weather: witness so many nations who have not yet tried the use of any clothes. Our ancient Gauls wore hardly any clothes; nor do the Irish, our neighbors, under so cold a sky.

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony of the world, is composed of contrary things, and one part is no less necessary than the other.

I have seen people rude by being over-polite.