It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not. - Jean de La Bruyère

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.
Out of difficulties grow miracles.
The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.
Two persons cannot long be friends if they cannot forgive each other's little failings.
All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.
Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.
We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone

S'il est heureux d'avoir de la naissance, il ne l'est pas moins d'être tel qu'on ne s'informe plus si vous en avez.

Some men speak one moment before they think; others tediously study everything they say, and in conversation bore us as painfully as was the travail of their mind; they are, as it were, made up of phrases and quaint expressions, whilst their gestures are as affected as their behaviour. They call themselves “purists,”210 and do not venture to say the most trifling word not in use, however expressive it may be. Nothing comes from them worth remembering, nothing is spontaneous and unrestrained; they speak correctly,211 but they are very tiresome.