A woman is no sooner ours than we are no longer hers.

We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. If a musician liked only one kind, what would he have to say?

The most ordinary things, the most common and familiar, if we could see them in their true light, would turn out to be the grandest miracles.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

Our zeal works wonders, whenever it supports our inclination toward hatred, cruelty, ambition.

I love a gay and sociable wisdom, and shun harshness and austerity in behaviour, holding every surly countenance suspect.