Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.
Every hour in itself, as it respects us in particular, is the only one we can call our own.
Life is a kind of sleep: old men sleep longest, nor begin to wake but when they are to die.
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends as to give them no cause to miss him less.
The very impossibility which I find to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
Nothing keeps longer than a middling fortune, and nothing melts away sooner than a large one.
Favor exalts a man above his equals, but his dismissal from that favor places him below them.
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.
We hope to grow old and we dread old age; that is to say, we love life and we flee from death.
Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.
Hatred is so lasting and stubborn, that reconciliation on a sickbed certainly forebodes death.
We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.
Love, slow and gradual in its growth, is too much like friendship ever to be a violent passion.
Life at court does not satisfy a man, but it keeps him from being satisfied with anything else.
We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.
We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it.
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.
To give awkwardly is churlishness. The most difficult part is to give, then why not add a smile?
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.
I never have wit until I am below stairs. [Fr., Je n'ai jamais d'esprit qu'au bas de l'escalier.]
To how many girls has a great beauty been of no other use but to make them expect a large fortune!
If a handsome woman allows that another woman is beautiful, we may safely conclude she excels her.
The best way to get on in the world is to make people believe it's to their advantage to help you.
It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent.
A well-born man is fortunate, but so is the man about whom people no longer ask, 'is he well-born?'
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.
The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.
The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.
It is boorish to live ungraciously: the giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?
It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well nor the judgment to hold their tongues.
There is a pleasure in meeting the glance of a person whom we have lately laid under some obligations.
A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession or business the surest way of growing rich.
It is easier to enrich ourselves with a thousand virtues, than to correct ourselves of a single fault.
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence.
Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect. [Fr., La moquerie est souvent une indigence d'esprit.]
Misers are neither relations, nor friends, nor citizens, nor Christians, nor perhaps even human beings.
Cheats easily believe others as bad as themselves; there is no deceiving them, nor do they long deceive.
Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
It is motive alone that gives real value to the actions of men, and disinterestedness puts the cap to it.
A wise man is not governed by others, nor does he try to govern them; he prefers that reason alone prevail.
If it be usual to be strongly impressed by things that are scarce, why are we so little impressed by virtue?
Death happens but once, yet we feel it every moment of our lives; it is worse to dread it than to suffer it.
We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the future will be for the virtuous and ingenious.
To bewail the loss of a person we love is a happiness compared with the necessity of living with one we hate.
It is a great misfortune not to possess sufficient wit to speak well, nor sufficient judgment to keep silent.
A man can deceive a woman by his sham attachment to her provided he does not have a real attachment elsewhere.
The generality of men expend the early part of their lives in contributing to render the latter part miserable.