Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles

One of the duties of old-age, is the management of time. The less that remains to us, the more valuable we ought to consider it. (p. 121).

Shame is a secret pride; and pride is an error with regard to one's own worth, and an injustice with regard to what one has a mind to appear to others. (p. 204).

A Persian ambassador asked the wife of Leonidas, why they paid such honors to the women at Lacedemon? "It is," replied she, "because they have entirely the forming of the men." (p. 143).

It is not always our faults that ruin us, but the manner of our conduct after we have committed them. (p. 200).

The world steals us from ourselves and solitude restores us. The world is composed of a herd, which are ever flying from themselves. (p. 136).

We spoil the dispositions nature has given to women ; we neglect their education, fill their minds with nothing solid, and destine them solely to please, and to please only by their graces or their vices.

We live with [our defects] as we do with the perfumes that we wear, we do not smell them ; they only incommode others. (p. 195).

Would you be esteemed? live with persons that are estimable. (p. 57).

The owning of faults is no hard matter for persons that find a fund within themselves to mend them. (p. 153).

With great employments and vulgar maxims, one is always restless and uneasy : it is not places, but reason, that removes anxiety from the mind. (p. 170).

Birth bestows less of honour than it demands; and to boast of ancestry is but to praise the merit of others. (p. 139).

The most necessary disposition to relish pleasures is to know how to be without them. (p. 160).

The love of esteem is the life and soul of society; it unites us to one another : I want your approbation, you stand in need of mine. By forsaking the converse of men, we forsake the virtues necessary for society; for when one is alone, one is apt to grow negligent; the world forces you to have a guard over yourself. (p. 155).

The principal merit which should be required in our friends, is virtue : It is that which assures us they are capable of friendship, and worthy of it : expect nothing from your connections, when they have not this foundation. (pp. 54-55).

To form a complete judgment of any one, we ought to have seen him acting the last part. (p. 126).