“Example is a dangerous lure: where the wasp got through the gnat sticks fast.”

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.

A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse.

We read on the foreheads of those who are surrounded by a foolish luxury, that fortune sells what she is thought to give.

Nothing is so oppressive as a secret: women find it difficult to keep one long; and I know a goodly number of men who are women in this regard.

To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism – this is the art of living.

Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.

We heed no instincts but our own.

The best laid plot can injure its maker, and often a man’s perfidy will rebound on himself.

All the brains in the world are powerless against the sort of stupidity that is in fashion.

If you deal with a fox, think of his tricks.

Still people are dangerous.

A hare is not caught with a drum.

If every man works at that for which nature fitted him, the cows will be well tended.

Habit, to which all of us are more or less slaves.

It is good to be charitable; but to whom? That is the point. As to the ungrateful, there is not one who does not at last die miserable.

Even if misfortune is only good for bringing a fool to his senses, it would still be just to deem it good for something.

One’s belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one’s conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren’t always right.

An eminent reputation is as dangerous as a bad one.

Hope, danger’s comforter.

Flattery labors under the odious charge of servility.

You are so afraid of losing your moral sense that you are not willing to take it through anything more dangerous than a mud-puddle.

Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing.

An utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.

There are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.