A pure style in writing results from the rejection of everything superfluous.

For the honest people, relations increase with the years. For the vicious, inconveniences increase. Inconstancy is the defect of vice; the influence of habit is one of the qualities of virtue.

Order in a house ought to be like the machinery in opera, whose effect produces great pleasure, but whose ends must be hid.

Women do not often have it in their power to give like men, but they forgive like Heaven.

It is often a sign of wit not to show it, and not to see that others want it.

In looking around me seeking for miserable resources against the heaviness of time, I open a book and I say to myself, as the cat to the fox: I have only one good turn, but I need no other.

You may be more prodigal of time than of money.