Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.

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

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

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

When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.

When unhappy, one doubts everything when happy one doubts nothing.

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.