As riches and honor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
When we are dead we are praised by those who survive us, though we frequently have no other merit than that of being no longer alive.
A man must have very eminent qualities to hold his own without being polite.
You may drive a dog off the King’s armchair, and it will climb into the preacher’s pulpit; he views the world unmoved, unembarrassed, unabashed.
A judge’s duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know their duty adhere to the general practice.
Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other.
Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
Love seizes us suddenly, without giving warning, and our disposition or our weakness favors the surprise; one look, one glance, from the fair fixes and determines us.
To make a book is as much a trade as to make a clock; something more than intelligence is required to become an author.
Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death.
To delay is injustice.
There exist some evils so terrible and some misfortunes so horrible that we dare not think of them, whilst their very aspect makes us shudder; but if they happen to fall on us, we find ourselves stronger than we imagined, we grapple with our ill luck, and behave better than we expected we should.
A man often runs the risk of throwing away a witticism if he admits that it is his own.
We must strive to make ourselves really worthy of some employment. We need pay no attention to anything else; the rest is the business of others.
We trust our secrets to our friends, but they escape from us in love.
When life is unhappy it is hard to endure, when it is happy it is terrible to think of it ending. Both amount to the same thing in the end.
As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.
Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.
To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.
False modesty is the refinement of vanity. It is a lie.