It is virtue which should determine us in the choice of our friends, without inquiring into their good or evil fortune.
Men make the best friends.
A look of intelligence is what regularity of features is to women: it is a styule of beauty to which the most vain may aspire. [Fr., L'air spirituel est dans les hommes ce que la regularite des traits est dans les femmes: c'est le genre de beaute ou les plus vains puissent aspirer.]
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.
All the worth of some people lies in their name; upon a closer inspection it dwindles to nothing, but from a distance it deceives us.
High birth is a gift of fortune which should never challenge esteem towards those who receive it, since it costs them neither study nor labor.
Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity. [Fr., Les hommes rougissent moins de leur crimes que de leurs faiblesses et de leur vanite.]
If you suppress the exorbitant love of pleasure and money, idle curiosity, iniquitous pursuits and wanton mirth, what a stillness would there be in the greatest cities.
It is weakness which makes us hate an enemy and seek revenge, and it is idleness that pacifies us and causes us to neglect it.
A coquette is one that is never to be persuaded out of the passion she has to please, nor out of a good opinion of her own beauty: time and years she regards as things that only wrinkle and decay other women, forgetting that age is written in the face, and that the same dress which became her when she was young now only makes her look older.
We confide our secret to a friend, but in love it escapes us.
The same common sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
Foolish jokers are thick on the ground, and it rains insects of that sort everywhere. A good joker is a rarity; even a man who is such by nature finds it hard to sustain the part for long; it seldom happens that the man who makes us laugh wins our esteem.
A man may have intelligence enough to excel in a particular thing and lecture on it, and yet not have sense enough to know he ought to be silent on some other subject of which he has but a slight knowledge; if such an illustrious man ventures beyond the bounds of his capacity, he loses his way and talks like a fool.
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!
As riches and honor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.
