Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word..

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..

Generosity is more charitable than wealth..

Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal..

What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions..

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad..

The happiness which is lacking makes one think even the happiness one has unbearable..

We are more conscious that a person is in the wrong when the wrong concerns ourselves..

Literature was formerly an art and finance a trade; today it is the reverse..

Solitude vivifies, isolation kills..

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..