“The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it.”

Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.

We are easily duped by those we love.

Innocence is not accustomed to blush.

Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all.

Love is a great master. It teaches us to be what we never were.

No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk.

It is a long road from conception to completion.

That must be fine, for I don’t understand a word.

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.

I prefer a pleasant vice to an annoying virtue.

I prefer an interesting vice to a virtue that bores.

The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.

Cover that bosom that I must not see: souls are wounded by such things.

Isn’t the greatest rule of all the rules simply to please?

Without dance, a man can do nothing.

The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.

It was my great good fortune, while I was still a student at college, to have possessed a copy of an English translation of his great work.

One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.

Truly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemy’s misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

We are always in a hurry to be happy; for when we have suffered a long time, we have great difficulty in believing in good fortune.

On what slender threads do life and fortune hang.

The result, I think, is pretty interesting … we don’t expect to make a fortune at it or ever be popular or famous or worshipped or hit The Ed Sullivan Show or the circuses or the big top.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.