» Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.
» Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
» Common sense is calculation applied to life.
» Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.
» Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.
» The best path through life is the highway.
» An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
» Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothing lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.
» Destiny has two ways of crushing us -- by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.
» Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius.