The easy, gentle, and sloping path . . . is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

Pride and curiosity are the two scourges of our souls. The latter prompts us to poke our noses into everything, and the former forbids us to leave anything unresolved and undecided.

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.

A man never speaks of himself without losing something. What he says in his disfavor is always beleived, but when he commends himself, he arouses mistrust.

Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect.

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

Gentleness and repose are paramount to everything else in woman.