Everyone gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in his own country.

No-one is exempt from speaking nonsense – the only misfortune is to do it solemnly.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition, let us disdain that thirst of honor and renown, so low and mendicant; that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people.

The most useful and honorable science and occupation for a woman is the science of housekeeping. I know some that are miserly, very few that are good managers.

The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts, and the great art of life is to have as many of them as possible.