Top 15 Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles Quotes

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).

To live in perpetual employment, is to travel rapidly through life. Tranquility lengthens our existence. (p. 136).

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

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

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).

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

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).

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).

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

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).

The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them and they make us despair in losing them. (p. 172).

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.

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).

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

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