Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.
Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?
A wellborn mind that is practiced in dealing with people makes itself thoroughly agreeable by itself. Art is nothing else but thelist and record of the productions of such minds.
If I were of the trade, I should naturalize art as much as they “artialize” nature.
To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct.
The most useful and honorable science and occupation for a woman is the science of housekeeping. I know some that are miserly, very few that are good managers.
It is an injustice that an old, broken, half-dead father should enjoy alone, in a corner of his hearth, possessions that would suffice for the advancement and maintenance of many children.
A man may by custom fortify himself against pain, shame, and suchlike accidents; but as to death, we can experience it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it.
There are few things on which we can pass a sincere judgement, because there are few things in which we have not, in one way or another, a particular interest.
All opinions in the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, although they differ as to the means of attaining it.
Is it not enough to make me come back to life out of spite, to have someone who spat in my face while I existed come and rub my feet when I am beginning to exist no longer?
We have the pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of greatness. Ours are more natural and all the more solid and sure for being humbler. Since we will not do so out of conscience, at least out of ambition let us reject ambition.
We cannot fail in following nature.
Whatever can be done another day can be done today.
What fear has once made me will, I am bound still to will when without fear.
If my intentions were not to be read in my eyes and voice, I should not have survived so long without quarrels and without harm, seeing the indiscreet freedom with which I say, right or wrong, whatever comes into my head.
I say that male and female are cast in the same mold; except for education and habits, the difference is not great.
What a wonderful thing it is that drop of seed, from which we are produced, bears in itself the impressions, not only of the bodily shape, but of the thoughts and inclinations of our fathers!
Aesop, that great man, saw his master making water as he walked. “What!” he said, “Must we void ourselves as we run?” Use our timeas best we may, yet a great part of it will still be idly and ill spent.
I have a vocabulary all my own. I “pass the time” when it is wet and disagreeable. When it is fine I do not wish to pass it; I ruminate it and hold on to it. We should hasten over the bad, and settle upon the good.