Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles Quotes

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

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).

The time of Christians is the price with which they purchase eternity. (p. 121).

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

Take care that your studies influence your manners. (p. 165).

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

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).

We fancy frequently that we have no grudge but against the men, when indeed our malignity is owing to their places : persons in great posts never yet enjoyed them with the good liking of the world, which only begins to do them justice when they are out of place. (p. 148).

Your tribunal is seated in your own breast, why then should you seek it elsewhere? (p. 168).

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).

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).

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

A man that does not aim at raising to himself a great name, will never perform any great actions. And such as go carelessly on in the road of their professions suffer all the fatigues, without acquiring either the honour or recompense that naturally attend it. (p. 137).

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.