“One can find women who have never had one love affair, but it is rare indeed to find any who have had only one.”

The heart is forever making the head its fool.

A man’s worth has its season, like fruit.

Taste may change, but inclination never.

Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.

The passions are the only orators which always persuade.

Funeral pomp is more for the vanity of the living than for the honor of the dead.

Perfect Valor is to do, without a witness, all that we could do before the whole world.

The mind is always the patsy of the heart.

The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.

We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.

Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves.

It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.

A dishonor greater than any affair, is that of a friend who never was.

Any one prominent in affairs can always see when a man may steal a horse and when a man may not look over a hedge.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

It was only one life. What is one life in the affairs of a state?

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.