Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health and dissipate your property. - Jean de La Bruyère

Il ne manque cependant à l'oisiveté du sage qu'un meilleur nom, et que méditer, parler, lire, et être tranquille s'appelât travailler.

[I]l semble que le mariage met tout le monde dans son ordre.

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.