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.
I have the fault of being a little more sincere than is proper.
Virtue is the first title of nobility.
Deference and intimacy live far apart.
Nothing can be fairer, or more noble, than the holy fervor of true zeal.
The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
With a smile we should instruct our youth...
If you make yourself understood, you’re always speaking well.
All the satires of the stage should be viewed without discomfort. They are public mirrors, where we are never to admit that we seeourselves; one admits to a fault when one is scandalized by its censure.
One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.
It may cost me twenty thousand francs; but for twenty thousand francs, I will have the right to rail against the iniquity of humanity, and to devote to it my eternal hatred.
What a terrible thing to be a great lord, yet a wicked man.
Age brings about everything; but it is not the time, Madam, as we know, to be a prude at twenty.
The only people who can be excused for letting a bad book loose on the world are the poor devils who have to write for a living.
You think you can marry for your own pleasure, friend?
One can be well-bred and write bad poetry.
Time has nothing to do with the matter.
No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.
Once you have the cap and gown all you need do is open your mouth. Whatever nonsense you talk becomes wisdom and all the rubbish good sense.
Rest assured that there is nothing which wounds the heart of a noble man more deeply than the thought his honour is assailed.
People don’t mind being mean; but they never want to be ridiculous.