There are some who speak one moment before they think.
If you wish to be held in esteem, you must ssociate only with those who estimable.
To forget someone means to think of him.
Manners carry the world for the moment, character for all time.
The majority of women have no principles of their own; they are guided by the heart, and depend for their own conduct, upon that of the men they love.
A woman is easily governed, if a man takes her in hand.
The best thing next to wit is a consciousness that it is not in us; without wit, a man might then know how to behave himself, so as not to appear to be a fool or a coxcomb.
When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death.
Languages are the keys of science.
How much wit, good-nature, indulgences, how many good offices and civilities, are required among friends to accomplish in some years what a lovely face or a fine hand does in a minute!
The events we most desire do not happen; or, if they do, it is neither in the time nor in the circumstances when they would have given us extreme pleasure.
It is worse to apprehend than to suffer.
It is through madness that we hate an enemy, and think of revenging ourselves; and it is through indolence that we are appeased, and do not revenge ourselves.
To what excesses do men rush for the sake of religion, of whose truth they are so little persuaded, and to whose precepts they pay so little regard!
They who, without any previous knowledge of us, think amiss of us, do us no harm; they attack not us, but the phantom of their own imagination.
Man makes up his mind he will preach, and he preaches.
Praise, of all things, is the most powerful excitement to commendable actions, and animates us in our enterprises.
I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.
There is what is called the highway to posts and honor, and there is a cross and by way, which is much the shortest.
Politeness does not always inspire goodness, equity, complaisance, and gratitude; it gives at least the appearance of these qualities, and makes man appear outwardly, as he should be within.