Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.

Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.

True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.

An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.

At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured.

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.