Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.

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.

It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.

Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.

Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.