Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.

In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.

It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.

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

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.

A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.