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

What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself.

A lover is a man who tries to be more amiable than it is possible for him to be.

Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.

Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.

Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.

It is among uneducated women that we may look for the most confirmed gossips. Goethe tells us there is nothing more frightful than bustling ignorance.