[After being corrected by a grammarian for using the feminine pronoun instead of the pseudogeneric masculine:] As you please, but for my part, if I were to express myself so, I should fancy I had a beard.
It is day by day that we go forward; today we are as we were yesterday and tomorrow we shall be like ourselves today. So we go on without being aware of it, and this is one of the miracles of Providence that I so love.
There is nothing so lovely as to be beautiful. Beauty is a gift of God and we should cherish it as such.
The heart never becomes wrinkled.
I dislike clocks with second-hands; they cut up life into too small pieces.
war often breaks out when there is the most talk of peace.
It is the fine rain that soaks us through.
Gloom and sadness are poison to us, and the origin of hysterics. You are right in thinking that this disease is in the imagination; you have defined it perfectly; it is vexation which causes it to spring up, and fear that supports it.
I am persuaded that the greater part of our complaints arise from want of exercise.
When I step into this library, I cannot understand why I ever step out of it.
... we ought to be astonished at nothing; for what do we not meet with in our journey through life?
Racine will pass away like the taste for coffee.
We are never satisfied with having done well; and in endeavoring to do better, we do much worse.
The heart has no wrinkles.
The desire to be singular and to astonish by ways out of the common seems to me to be the source of many virtues.
There are twelve hours in the day, and above fifty in the night.
good and evil travel on the same road, but they leave different impressions.
Long life will sometimes obscure the star of fame.
It is freezing fit to split a stone.
Thicken your religion a little. It is evaporating altogether by being subtilized.
Religious people spend so much time with their confessors because they like to talk about themselves.
. . .the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous. . . the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till today. . . I cannot bring myself to tell you: guess what it is.
I pity those who have no taste for reading.
if I inflict wounds, I heal them.
Were it not for the amusement of our books, we should be moped to death for want of occupation. It rains incessantly. ... we tickle ourselves in order to laugh; to so low an ebb are we reduced.
Not to find pleasure in serious reading gives a pastel coloring to the mind.
It is sometimes best to slip over thoughts and not go to the bottom of them.
It is thus that we walk through the world like the blind, not knowing whither we are going, regarding as bad what is good, regarding as good what is bad, and ever in entire ignorance.
When we reckon without Providence, we must frequently reckon twice.
Nothing is more certain of destroying any good feeling that may be cherished towards us than to show distrust. To be suspected as an enemy is often enough to make a man become so; the whole matter is over, there is no farther use of guarding against it. On the contrary, confidence leads us naturally to act kindly, we are affected by the good opinion which others entertain of us, and we are not easily induced to lose it.
Nothing is so capable of overturning a good intention as to show a distrust of it; to be suspected for an enemy, is often sufficient to make a person become one.
In all nations truth is the most sublime, the most simple, the most difficult, and yet the most natural thing.
the days, and the months, and the years, pass so swiftly, that I can no longer retain them. Time, in its flight, hurries me away, in spite of myself; in vain I endeavor to stop him, he drags me along: the thought of this alarms me.
It is a disgraceful thing to be ignorant.
I know of no sorrow greater than that occasioned by a delay of the post.
It is not always sorrow that opens the fountains of the eyes.
The world has no long injustices.
We must always live in hope; without that consolation there would be no living.
I do not like to employ secretaries that have more wit than myself. I am afraid to make them write all my nonsense.
Faith creates the virtues in which it believes.
Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions.
If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage?
... Providence conducts us with so much kindness through the different periods of our life, that we scarcely feel the change; our days glide gently and imperceptibly along, like the motion of the hour-hand, which we cannot discover. ... we advance gradually; we are the same to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow as to-day: thus we go on, without perceiving it, which is a miracle of the Providence I adore.
Truth and tears clear the way to a deep and lasting friendship. True friendship is never serene.
I love you so passionately, that I hide a great part of my love, so as not to oppress you with it.
there are some people who never acknowledge themselves in the wrong; God help them!
. . . long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in . . .
There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things
There is nobody who is not dangerous for someone.
We like so much to hear people talk of us and of our motives, that we are charmed even when they abuse us.
matrimony is a very dangerous disorder; I had rather drink.
Reason bears disgrace, courage combats it, patience surmounts it.
We are always on the side of those who speak last.
The human heart will never wrinkle
winter is past, and we have a prospect of spring that is superior to spring itself.
We like so much to talk of ourselves that we are never weary of those private interviews with a lover during the course of whole years, and for the same reason the devout like to spend much time with their confessor; it is the pleasure of talking of themselves, even though it be to talk ill.
long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in: but Providence in kindness to us causes us to forget it. It is much the same with lying-in women. Heaven permits this forgetfulness that the world may be peopled, and that folks may take journeys to Provence.
If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.
Why do we discover faults so much more readily than perfection.
Occupation is the best safeguard for women under all circumstances--mental or physical, or both. Cupid extinguishes his torch in the atmosphere of industry.
True friendship is never serene.
Happiness, like misfortunes, never comes alone.
. . . this life is a perpetual chequer-work of good and evil, pleasure and pain. When in possession of what we desire, we are only so much the nearer losing it; and when at a distance from it, we live in expectation of enjoying it again.
Death makes us all equal.
We like no noise unless we make it ourselves.
... truth ... carries authority with it; while falsehood and lies skulk under a load of words, without having the power of persuasion; the more they attempt to show themselves, the more they are entangled.
. . . it seldom happens, I think, that a man has the civility to die when all the world wishes it.
There is no one who does not represent a danger to someone.
Ah, what a grudge I owe physicians! what mummery is their art!
I fear nothing so much as a man who is witty all day long.
Friendships take work. Use disagreements as opportunity to come out better on the other side
We are so fond of hearing ourselves spoken of, that, be it good or ill, it is still pleasing.
Oh Dear! How unfortunate I am not to have anyone to weep with!
