A man who knows the court is master of his gestures, of his eyes and of his face; he is profound, impenetratable; he dissimulates bad offices, smiles at his enemies, controls his irritation, disguises his passions, belies his heartm speaks and acts against his feelings.
Piety with some people, but especially with women, is either a passion, or an infirmity of age, or a fashion which must be followed.
Nothing is easier for passion than to overcome reason, but the greatest triumph is to conquer a man's own interests.
The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation.
Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship ever to be a violent passion.
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.
