All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

Vain is equivalent to empty; thus vanity is so miserable a thing, that one cannot give it a worse name than its own. It proclaims itself for what it is.

Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.

The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone.