Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

That which deceives us and does us harm, also undeceives us and does us good.

The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.

The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.

God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues.