Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.
Friends should be preferred to kings.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.
Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.