Since unhappiness excites interest, many, in order to render themselves interesting, feign unhappiness.
At first we hope too much and later on, not enough.
The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire, the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.
Generosity is more charitable than wealth.
The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.
Great souls are harmonious.
Like those statues which must be made larger than "nature" in order that, viewed from below, or from a distance, they may appear to be of the "natural" size, certain truths must be "strained" in order that the public may form a just idea of them.
The Holy Scriptures praise the dew of the morning and the dew of the evening; ros matutinum, ros serotinum! Happy is he who possesses the gift of tears! when young, he will bear flowers; when old, fruit!
History, if thoroughly comprehended, furnishes something of the experience which a man would acquire who should be a contemporary of all ages and a fellow citizen of all peoples.
Friends are rare for, the good reason that men are not common.
The philosopher spends in becoming a man the time which the ambitious man spends in becoming a personage.
A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.
God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.
The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues.
We often experience more regret over the part we have left, than pleasure over the part we have preferred.
Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.
As long as we love, we lend to the beloved object qualities of mind and heart which we deprive him of when the day of misunderstanding arrives.
We love justice greatly, and just men but little.
Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.
Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.
Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.
The orator is the mouth (os) of a nation.
When orators and auditors have the same prejudices, those prejudices run a great risk of being made to stand for incontestable truths.
It is a very rare thing for a man of talent to succeed by his talent.
The egoist does not tolerate egoism.
