“My heavens! I’ve been talking prose for the last forty years without knowing it.”

We should look long and carefully at ourselves before we pass judgement on others.

It is fine for a woman to know a lot; but I don’t want her to have this shocking desire to be learned for learnedness sake. When I ask a woman a question, I like her to pretend to ignore what she really knows.

I will not leave you until I have seen you hanged.

I have the fault of being a little more sincere than is proper.

She is laughing up her sleeve at you.

I might, by chance, write something just as shoddy; But then I wouldn’t show it to everybody.

The great ambition of women is to inspire love.

Cultivated people should be superior to any consideration so sordid as a mercenary interest.

Birth means nothing where there is no virtue.

I believe that two and two are four and that four and four are eight.

There is no protection against slander.

Too great haste leads us to error.

When we are understood, we always speak well, and then all your fine diction serves no purpose.

Rest assured that there is nothing which wounds the heart of a noble man more deeply than the thought his honour is assailed.

One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.

The more powerful the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; and the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue.