“Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.”

Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life.

To be happy, a man must love his wife as she chooses to be loved.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

Can you find a man who loves the occupation that provides him with a livelihood? Professions are like marriages; we end by feeling only their inconveniences.

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy–a vice which yields no return?

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.

People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.

Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual.

As a rule, only the poor are generous.

Everybody all over the world takes a wife’s estimate into account in forming an opinion of a man.

Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.

Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.

The Antidote to Anger & Fear is gratitude.

Take things always by their smooth handle.

In an expression of true gratitude, sadness is conspicuous only by its absence.

My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.

Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.