To amend mankind, moralists should show them man, not as he is, but as he ought to be.
Men who would persecute others for religious opinions, prove the errors of their own.
A poor man defended himself when charged with stealing food to appease the cravings of hunger, saying, the cries of the stomach silenced those of the conscience.
We are more prone to murmur at the punishment of our faults than to lament them.
Society seldom forgives those who have discovered the emptiness of its pleasures, and who can live independent of it and them.
When we bring back with us the objects most dear, and find those we left unchanged, we are tempted to doubt the lapse of time; but one link in the chain of affection broken, and every thing seems altered.
Imagination, which is the Eldorado of the poet and of the novel-writer, often proves the most pernicious gift to the individuals who compose the talkers instead of the writers in society.
Modern historians are all would-be philosophers; who, instead of relating facts as they occurred, give us their version, or rather perversions of them, always colored by their political prejudices, or distorted to establish some theory . . .
When we find that we are not liked, we assert that we are not understood; when probably the dislike we have excited proceeds from our being too fully comprehended.
Only vain people wage war against the vanity of others.
People seem to lose all respect for the past; events succeed each other with such velocity that the most remarkable one of a few years gone by, is no more remembered than if centuries had closed over it.
Listeners beware, for ye are doomed never to hear good of yourselves.
alas! there is no casting anchor in the stream of time!
Pleasure is like a cordial - a little of it is not injurious, but too much destroys.
You were wise not to waste years in a lawsuit ... he who commences a suit resembles him who plants a palm-tree which he will not live to see flourish.
Heaven sends us misfortunes as a moral tonic.
There is no knowledge for which so great a price is paid as a knowledge of the world; and no one ever became an adept in it except at the expense of a hardened or a wounded heart.
Mediocrity is beneath a brave soul.
He who would remain honest ought to keep away want.
Arles is certainly one of the most interesting towns I have ever seen, whether viewed as a place remarkable for the objects of antiquity it contains, or for the primitive manners of its inhabitants and its picturesque appearance.
The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.
The vices of the rich and great are mistaken for error; and those of the poor and lowly, for crimes.
A woman's head is always influenced by her heart, but a man's heart is always influenced by his head.
Friends are the thermometer by which we may judge the temperature of our fortunes.
Those can most easily dispense with society who are the most calculated to adorn it; they only are dependent on it who possess no mental resources, for though they bring nothing to the general mart, like beggars, they are too poor to stay at home.
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