The making presents to a lady one addresses is like throwing armor into an enemy's camp, with a resolution to recover it.

Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.

Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use.

I hate a style, as I do a garden, that is wholly flat and regular; that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.

Let the gulled fool the toil of war pursue, where bleed the many to enrich the few.

I know not whether increasing years do not cause us to esteem fewer people and to bear with more.

Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.