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!

Men, generally going with the stream, seldom judge for themselves, and purity of taste is almost as rare as talent.

A good action is preferable to an argument.

It is reported in the supplement of the council of Nicæan that the fathers, being very perplexed to know which were the cryphal or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testaments, put them all pell-mell on an altar, and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It is a pity that this eloquent procedure has not survived.

Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.

History in general is a collection of crimes, follies, and misfortunes among which we have now and then met with a few virtues, and some happy times.

If there had been a censorship of the press in Rome we should have had today neither Horace nor Juvenal, nor the philosophical writings of Cicero.