You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you?
When we are young we lay up for old age; when we are old we save for death.
Great things only require to be simply told, for they are spoiled by emphasis; but little things should be clothed in lofty language, as they are only kept up by expression, tone of voice, and style of delivery.
The fool only is troublesome. A plan of sense perceives when he is agreeable or tiresome; he disappears the very minute before he would have been thought to have stayed too long.
One must laugh before one is happy, or one may die without ever laughing at all.
Born merely for the purpose of digestion.
A long disease seems to be a halting place between life and death, that death itself may be a comfort to those who die and to those who are left behind.
There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.
All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
I take sanctuary in an honest mediocrity.
A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.
A man who has schemed for some time can no longer do without it; all other ways of living are to him dull and insipid.
We need not envy certain people their great wealth; they acquired it at a heavy cost, which would not suit us; they staked their rest, their health, their honour and their conscience to acquire it, the price is too high, and there is nothing to be gained by such a bargain.
There is speaking well, speaking easily, speaking justly and speaking seasonably: It is offending against the last, to speak of entertainments before the indigent; of sound limbs and health before the infirm; of houses and lands before one who has not so much as a dwelling; in a word, to speak of your prosperity before the miserable; this conversation is cruel, and the comparison which naturally arises in them betwixt their condition and yours is excruciating.
We are valued in this world at the rate we desire to be valued.
The doctors allow one to die, the charlatans kill.
Some men promise to keep your secret and yet reveal it without knowing they are doing so; they do not wag their lips, and yet they are understood; it is read on their brow and in their eyes; it is seen through their breast; they are transparent.
Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.
The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone. [Fr., Le commencement et le declin de l'amour se font sentir par l'embarras ou l'on est de se trouver seuls.]
The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has adorned the actions of heroes ; and thus I cannot say whether the historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble materials, or those great men to their historians.
Rarely do they appear great before their valets.
It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.
Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.
A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.
There are some souls so base and filthy that they love gain and interest as noble souls love fame and virtue, knowing one pleasure only, that of making money or of not losing it; anxious and avid for their ten per cent; entirely preoccupied with what is owed them; forever concerned about the depreciation or discredit of money; buried, and as it were engulfed, amid contracts, title-deeds and parchments. Such people are neither parents, friends, citizens or Christians, nor, perhaps, even men; they merely have money.
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