If it be true that in showing pity and compassion we think of ourselves, because we fear to be one day or another in the same circumstances as those … - Jean de La Bruyère

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.

Il faut rire avant que d'être heureux, de peur de mourir sans avoir ri.

“Horace or Boileau have said such a thing before you.”—”I take your word for it, but I have used it as my own. May I not have the same correct thought after them, as others may have after me?”