There are certain things in which mediocrity is intolerable: poetry, music, painting, public eloquence. What torture it is to hear a frigid speech being pompously declaimed, or second-rate verse spoken with all a bad poet's bombast!
An inconstant woman is one who is no longer in love; a false woman is one who is already in love with another person; a fickle woman is she who neither knows whom she loves nor whether she loves or not; and the indifferent woman, one who does not love at all.
A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.
False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.
The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.
A woman is easily governed, if a man takes her in hand.
Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.
Don't wait to be happy to laugh... You may die and never have laughed.
A lovely countenance is the fairest of all sights, and the sweetest harmony is the sound of the voice of her whom we love.
Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.
You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he views the world unmoved, unembarrassed, unabashed.
Logic is the art of making truth prevail.
As a man falls out of favour and his wealth declines, we discover for the first time the ridiculous aspects of his character, which were always there but which wealth and favour had concealed.
A good saying often runs the risk of being thrown away when quoted as the speaker's own. [Fr., C'est souvent hasarder un bon mot et vouloir le perdre que de le donner pour sien.]
A faithless woman, if known to be such by the person concerned, is but faithless; if she is believed faithful, she is treacherous.
False glory is the rock of vanity; it seduces men to affect esteem by things which they indeed possess, but which are frivolous, and which for a man to value himself on would be a scandalous error.
Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.
I am not surprised that there are gambling houses, like so many snares laid for human avarice; like abysses where many a man's money is engulfed and swallowed up without any hope of return; like frightful rocks against which the gamblers are thrown and perish.
It is too much for a husband to have a wife who is a coquette and sanctimonious as well; she should select only one of those qualities.
A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune; it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.
The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.
A tall, well-built man with a deep chest and broad shoulders can carry a heavy burden with ease and unconcern, and still keep one hand free; a dwarf would be crushed by half that weight. Thus lofty posts make great men greater still, and small men much smaller.
For a woman to be at once a coquette and a bigot is more than the humblest of husbands can bear; she should mercifully choose between the two.
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
If some persons died, and others did not die, death would be a terrible affliction.
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