111 quotes
A look of intelligence in men is what regularity of features is in women: it is a style of beauty to which the most vain may aspire.
A judge's duty is to grant justice, but his practice is to delay it: even those judges who know their duty adhere to the general practice.
Rarely do they appear great before their valets.
Jesting, often, only proves a want of intellect.
There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honours too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.
Les Caractères (1688)
Ainsi les postes éminents rendent les grands hommes encore plus grands, et les petits beaucoup plus petits.
Les Caractères (1688)
The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discloses to me His existence.
Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other.
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688)
The same principle leads us to neglect a man of merit that induces us to admire a fool.
We trust our secrets to our friends, but they escape from us in love.
We could never imagine what a strange disproportion a few or a great many pieces of money make between men, if we did not see it every day with our own eyes.
We come too late to say anything which has not been said already.
Les Caractères (1688)
We dread old age, which we are not sure of being able to attain.
In Friendship we only see those faults which may be prejudicial to our friends. In love we see no faults but those by which we suffer ourselves.
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688)
He must be a dull Fellow indeed, whom neither Love, Malice, nor Necessity, can inspire with Wit.
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688)
One faithful Friend is enough for a man's self, 'tis much to meet with such an one, yet we can't have too many for the sake of others.
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688)
Eloquence may be found in conversations and in all kinds of writings; it is rarely found when looked for, and sometimes discovered where it is least expected.
A fool is always troublesome, a man of sense perceives when he pleases or is tiresome ; he goes away the very minute before it might have been thought he stayed too long.
Les Caractères (1688)
The highest reach of a news-writer is an empty Reasoning on Policy, and vain Conjectures on the public Management.
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688)
If Poverty is the Mother of Crimes, want of Sense is the Father.
The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (1688)