“The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.”
“The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.”
“Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.”
“The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.”
“One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.”
“The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.”
“Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.”
“A person's worth in this world is estimated according to the value they put on themselves.”
“Between good sense and good taste there lies the difference between a cause and its effect.”
“No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.”
“Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.”
“A vain man finds it wise to speak good or ill of himself; a modest man does not talk of himself.”
“A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.”
“We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.”
“At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.”
“Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present -- which seldom happens to us.”
“There are only two ways of getting on in the world: by one's own industry, or by the stupidity of others.”
“A slave has but one master. An ambition man, has as many as there are people who helped him get his fortune.”
“Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property.”
“As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid.”
“As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.”
“One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.”
“If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other.”
“Everything has been said, and we have come too late, now that men have been living and thinking for seven thousand years and more.”
“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.”
“There are three stages in a person's life, birth, their life and death. They are not conscious of birth submit to death and forget to live.”
“The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.”
“It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.”
“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.”
“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.”