Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired.

The orator is the mouth (os) of a nation.

Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.

The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire, the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.

Length of saying makes languor of hearing.

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.

We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.