Scoundrels are always sociable.

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within.

There is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared with us-I mean their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise forbearance; remember that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold.

Happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering-from positive evil.

Every hero is a Samson. The strong man succumbs to the intrigues of the weak and the many; and if in the end he loses all patience he crushes both them and himself.