We must take the good with the bad; For the good when it’s good, is so very good That the bad when it’s bad can’t be bad!
One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.
There is something inexpressibly charming in falling in love and, surely, the whole pleasure lies in the fact that love isn’t lasting.
Cultivated people should be superior to any consideration so sordid as a mercenary interest.
Malicious tongues spread their poison abroad and nothing here below is proof against them.
Sometimes I feel something akin to rage At the corrupted morals of this age!
A good husband be the best sort of plaster for to cure a young woman’s ailments.
Wives rarely fuss about their beauty To guarantee their mate’s affection.
The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.
There’s nothing people can’t contrive to praise or condemn and find justification for doing so, according to their age and their inclinations.
My heavens! I’ve been talking prose for the last forty years without knowing it.
No reason makes it right To shun accepted ways from stubborn spite; And we may better join the foolish crowd Than cling to wisdom, lonely though unbowed.
Men often marry in hasty recklessness and repent afterward all their lives.
There is no protection against slander.
Frankly, it’s good enough to lock up in a drawer.
Isn’t the greatest rule of all the rules simply to please?
We live under a prince who is an enemy to fraud, a prince whose eyes penetrate into the heart, and whom all the art of impostors can’t deceive.
It is fine for a woman to know a lot; but I don’t want her to have this shocking desire to be learned for learnedness sake. When I ask a woman a question, I like her to pretend to ignore what she really knows.
In order to prove a friend to one’s guests, frugality must reign in one’s meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat.
Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man.