A woman can keep one secret the secret of her age.

To a toad what is beauty? A female with two lovely pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and green spotted back.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

Friends should be preferred to kings.

The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.

You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst!

Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies." (Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)