WIDENER
HN NTM5 X
A THOUSAND FLASHES
OF FRENCH
WIT
WISDOM, AND
WICKEDNESS.


37578.48,2

HARVARD COLLEGE
LIBRARY
CARDIAN
HARVAA
VERI
EMIA
RISTO
сесе,
VON
TAS
CHR
SS146
KOMONO
ON
FROM THE LIBRARY OF
GEORGE FILLMORE SWAIN
Gordon McKay Professor of
Civil Engineering
1909-1929
N.BANGS
BOOKS
54 Wes
PRO


6101 Fillmore.
limone





A THOUSAND FLASHES
OF FRENCH
WIT,
WISDOM,
AND
WICKEDNESS
COLLECTED AND TRANSLATED
BY
: J. DE FINOD.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.
1880.


37577,448.2
HITUS COLLEGE LIBRARY
FRA THE RY OF
PROF. C ECE F. SWAIN
OCT. 20, 1933
COPYRIGHT BY
D. APPLETON & COMPANY,
1880.


PREFATORY.
READER : As an amateur botanist, I have pen-
etrated some avenues of the vast garden of lit-
erature, and I have gathered flowers of different
species to compose a bouquet which I offer to you.
Occasionally, I have allowed myself to insert
some of my own thoughts among those of the great
thinkers here represented, as one shelters timid
violets by planting them at the foot of majestic
oaks.
In compiling this book, I have carefully ex-
cluded everything that would seem objectionable
to you, my liberal but virtuous reader, the Eng-
lish language being more austere than the French
in its expressions; but, after having paid a legiti-
mate tribute to your just susceptibilities, I have,
without timorous scruples, preserved such piquant
gems as could be enjoyed without endangering
your morals.


In an orderly spirit, for which posterity, if not
the present generation, will give me thanks, I have
mixed the serious with the jocular; for I feared
that, if I placed the wisdom at the beginning and
the wickedness at the end of the book, you would
begin your reading retrogressively, which is con-
trary to established principles. At the worst, this
subterfuge is not more criminal than that of the
physician who coats his bitter pills with sugar.
The thinker, the skeptic, the misanthrope, the
sentimentalist, the melancholic, and the mirthful
will find in these pages ample food for their differ-
ent appetites. Democritus elbows Heraclitus all
the way long; and I have no doubt that, after
having perused meditatively these deep or fanci-
ful lucubrations of eminent authors, you will have
greatly improved your natural disposition.
A final word to the lady reader: You will see,
fair reader, that much good has been said of you,
and, alas! much bad also; this is because no
subject more worthy of attention has ever haunted
the minds of all the great philosophers of the world.
But listen to this well-meant injunction : believe
unhesitatingly all that is said in your favor, and
deny energetically, as I myself do, all that is said


to your prejudice. Do not criminate an innocent
compiler, who would not exchange one of your
smiles for all the wisdom of Solomon, and who has
inserted in his book the malicious remarks of cer-
tain ill-natured philosophers, only to show how far
man’s ingratitude can go.
DE FINOD.





On
INTRODUCTORY.
To select well among old things is almost
equal to inventing new ones.
Trublet.
The flavor of detached thoughts depends upon
the conciseness of their expression: for thoughts
are grains of sugar, or of salt, that must be melted
in a drop of water.
7. Petit-Senn.
When we say there is nothing new under the
sun, we do not count forgotten things.
E. Thierry.
A burlesque word is often a mighty sermon.
Boileau.
He who hears but one bell, hears but one
sound.
Proverb.


What seems only ludicrous is sometimes very
serious.
Rabelais.
Better a man with paradoxes than a man with
prejudices.
7. 7. Rousseau.
We must laugh before we are happy, lest we
should die without having laughed.
La Bruyère.
The history of love would be the history
of humanity: it would be a beautiful book to
write.
Ch. Nodier.
Strong thoughts are iron nails driven in the
mind, that nothing can draw out.
Diderot.
In this world, one must put cloaks on all
truths, even the nicest.
Balzac.
Fear of hypocrites and fools is the great plague
of thinking and writing.
7. Janin.
Women prefer us to say a little evil of them,
rather than say nothing of them at all.
A. Ricard.


All truths are not to be uttered; still it is
always good to hear them.
Mme. du Deffand.
Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the
body.
De Saint-Réal.
Thought is the first faculty of man: to express
it is one of his first desires; to spread it, his
dearest privilege.
Raynal.
One of the principal occupations of men is to
divine women.
Lacretelle.
Love is composed of so many sensations, that
something new of it can always be said.
Saint-Prosper.
A truth that one does not understand becomes
an error.
Desbarolles.
Can one better expiate his sins than by enlist-
ing his experience in the service of morals.
De Bernard.
A delicate thought is a flower of the mind.
Rollin.


IO
Men may say of marriage and women what
they please: they will renounce neither the one
nor the other.
The history of the thoughts of men, curious on
account of their infinite variety, is also sometimes
instructive.
Fontenelle.
Men say of women what pleases them; women
do with men what pleases them.
De Ségur.
Verity is nudity.
A. de Musset.
A jest that makes a virtuous woman only smile,
often frightens away a prude; but, when real dan-
ger forces the former to flee, the latter does not
hesitate to advance.
Laténa.
To laugh is the characteristic of man.
Rabelais.
Although it is dangerous to have too much
knowledge of certain subjects, it is still more dan-
gerous to be totally ignorant of them.
Colombat.


II
There will always remain something to be said
of woman, as long as there is one on the earth.
Boufflers.
When one writes of woman, he must reserve
the right to laugh at his ideas of the day before.
A. Ricard.
O Truth! pure and sacred virgin, when wilt
thou be worthily revered ? O Goddess who in-
structs us, why didst thou put thy palace in a
well? When will our learned writers, alike free
from bitterness and from flattery, faithfully teach
us life?
Voltaire.
Should we condemn ourselves to ignorance to
preserve hope?
E. Souvestre.
Ignorance is the mother of all evils.
Montaigne.
All my misfortunes come of having thought
too well of my fellows.
Rousseau.
We laugh but little in our days, but are we less
frivolous ?
Béranger.


12
Common sense is not a common thing.
Valaincourt.
Our century is a brutal thinker.
Béranger.
The most completely lost of all days is the one
on which we have not laughed.
Chamfort.
The most completely lost of all days is the one
on which we have not thought.
De Finod.


Twenty years in the life of a man is sometimes
a severe lesson.
Mme, de Staël.
Envy lurks at the bottom of the human heart
like a viper in its hole.
Balzac.
Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their
liberty, and women their happiness.
Mme, de Rieux.
Young saint, old devil; young devil, old saint.
Proverb.
The heart has no wrinkles.
Mme. de Sévigné.
Experience is the name men give to their fol-
lies, or their sorrows.
A. de Musset.
Women are constantly the dupes, or the vic-
tims, of their extreme sensitiveness.
Balzac.
Oblivion is the flower that grows best on graves.
George Sand.
In life, as in a promenade, woman must lean
on a man above her.
A. Karr.


15
· For one Orpheus who went to Hell to seek his
wife, how many widowers who would not even go
to Paradise to find theirs !
7. Petit-Senn.
When a lover gives, he demands—and much
more than he has given.
Parny.
In most men there is a dead poet whom the
man survives.
Sainte-Beuve.
Woman is a perfected devil.
Victor Hugo.
How many people would be mute if they were
forbidden to speak well of themselves, and evil of
others !
Mme. de Fontaines.
Coquettes are the quacks of love.
La Rochefoucauld.
To remain virtuous, a man has only to combat
his own desires : a woman must resist her own in-
clinations, and the continual attack of man.
Laténa.
We condemn vice and extol virtue only through
interest.
La Rochefoucauld.


16
The less one-sees and knows men, the higher
one esteems them; for experience teaches their
real value.
Marguerite de Valois.
Beauty without grace is a hook without a bait.
Ninon de Lenclos.
The destiny of nations depends upon the man-
ner in which they feed themselves.
Brillat-Savarin.
Experience is a keen knife that hurts, while it
extracts the cataract that blinds.
De Finod.
He who is never guilty of follies is not so
wise as he imagines.
La Rochefoucauld.
Contempt is like the hot iron that brands crim-
inals : its imprint is almost always indelible.
Alibert.
Antiquity is the aristocracy of History.
A. Dumas père.
A hydra advances which will soon devour all
the men of sentiment: this hydra is the cipher.
0. Firmez,


Folly was condemned to serve as a guide to
Love whom she had blinded.
La Fontaine.
The future of society is in the hands of the
mothers. If the world was lost through woman,
she alone can save it.
De Beaufort.
What we gain by experience is not worth what
we lose in illusion.
Petit-Senn.
The breaking of a heart leaves no traces.
George Sand.
Rejected lovers need never despair! There
are four and twenty hours in a day, and not a mo-
ment in the twenty-four in which a woman may
not change her mind.
De Finod.
There are few husbands whom the wife can
not win in the long run by patience and love, un-
less they are harder than the rocks which the soft
water penetrates in time.
Marguerite de Valois.
From the moment it is touched, the heart can
not dry up.
Bourdaloue.


18
Prejudice is the reason of fools.
Voltaire.
The best government is not that which ren-
ders men the happiest, but that which renders the
greatest number happy.
Ch. P. Duclos.
Hypocrisy of manners, a vice peculiar to mod-
ern nations, has contributed more than one thinks
to destroy that energy of character which distin-
guished the nations of antiquity.
Condorcet.
Celebrity sells dearly what we think she gives.
E. Souvestre.
The world either breaks or hardens the heart.
Chamfort.
Old age is the night of life, as night is the old
age of the day. Still, night is full of magnifi-
cence; and, for many, it is more brilliant than the
day.
Mme. Swetchine.
A mother's tenderness and caresses are the
milk of the heart.
Mlle, de Guérin,


Many have lived on a pedestal, who will never
have a statue when dead.
Béranger.
In eternal cares we spend our years, ever agi-
tated by new desires : we look forward to living,
and yet never live.
Fontenelle.
Frequently the curses of men bring the bless-
ings of Heaven.
Lamennais.
There are some moral conditions in which
Death smiles upon us, as smiles a silent and peace-
ful night upon the exhausted laborer.
Alfred Mercier.
At the age when the faculties droop, when stern
experience has destroyed all sweet illusions, man
may seek solitude; but, at twenty, the affections
which he is compelled to repress are a tomb in
which he buries himself alive.
E. de Girardin.
Doubt follows white-winged Hope with a limp-
ing gait.
Balzac.
Progress is lame.
Sainte-Beuve.


20
Great vices, and great virtues, are exceptions
in mankind.
Napoleon 1.
It is easier to take care of a peck of fileas than
of one woman.
Proverb.
Hope is the gardener of the heart.
De Finod.
Many men kill themselves for love, but many
more women die of it.
Lemontey.
No one knows himself until he has suffered.
A. de Musset.
Who would venture upon the journey of life, if
compelled to begin it at the end ?
Mme. de Maintenon.
All those observers who have spent their lives
in the study of the human heart, know. less about
the signs of love than the most brainless, yet sensi-
tive woman.
7. 7. Rousseau.
There are no oaths that make so many perju-
rers as the vows of love.
Rochebrune.


21
One can impose silence on sentiment, but one
can not give it limits..
Mme. Necker.
Women deceived by men want to marry them:
it is a kind of revenge as good as any other.
Beaumanoir.
Recollection is the only paradise out of which
we can not be driven.
: One must tell women only what one wants to
be known.
Caron.
One blushes oftener from the wounds of self-
love than from modesty.
Mme. Guibert.
Between the mouth and the kiss, there is al-
ways time for repentance.
A. Ricard.
Prosperity makes few friends.
Vauvenargues.
The thought of eternity consoles us for the
shortness of life.
Malesherbes.


22
He is the happiest who renders the greatest
number happy.
Desmahis.
Flow, wine! smile, woman! and the universe
is consoled !
Béranger.
We should not pass from the earth without
leaving traces to carry our memory to posterity.
Napoleon 1.
The moral amelioration of man constitutes the
chief mission of woman.
A. Comte.
Everywhere the strong have made the laws and
oppressed the weak; and, if they have sometimes
consulted the interests of society, they have always
forgotten those of humanity.
Turgot.
We rarely confess that we deserve what we
suffer.
Quesnel.
Under the freest constitution ignorant people
are still slaves.
Condorcet.
Love decreases when it ceases to increase.
Chateaubriand.


Imagination has more charm in writing than
in speaking : great wings must fold before enter-
ing a salon.
Prince de Ligne.
In separations, the one who departs is the soon-
est consoled.
Mme, de Montolieu.
Partake of love as a temperate man partakes
of wine: do not become intoxicated.
A. de Musset.
The last census of France embraced nearly
twenty millions of women. Happy rascal!
In love affairs, from
there is but a kiss.
innocence to the fault,
A. Second.
Fortune does not change men : it unmasks
them.
Mme, Necker.
Virtue and Love are two ogres : one must eat
the other.
D'Houdetot.
The table is the only place where we do not
get weary during the first hour.
Brillat-Savarin.


24
Love never dies of starvation, but often of in-
digestion.
Ninon de Lenclos.
Man corrupts all that he touches.
Montaigne.
Shun idleness: it is the rust that attaches it-
self to the most brilliant metals.
Voltaire.
He who is devoted to everybody is devoted to
nobody.
C. Delavigne.
Of all serious things, marriage is the most ludi-
crous.
Beaumarchais.
The waves of life toss our destinies like sea-
weeds detached from the rock. Houses are ships
which receive but passengers.
Souvestre.
The man who enters his wife's dressing-room
is either a philosopher, or a fool.
Balzac.
The sowing of wild oats is necessary in the
life of a man. Libertinism is a leaven that fer-
ments sooner or later.
7. 7. Rousseau.


25
-
The Devil and Love are but one.
Voltaire.
Hope is a lure. There is no hand that can
retain a wave or a shadow.
Victor Hugo.
Inopportune consolations increase a deep sor-
row.
7. 7. Rousseau.
We instinctively abhor calumny as we do a
snake, for fear of its venom; but, is our aversion
to it so great when it attacks others ?
De Finod.
Let youth dance : tempests of the heart arise
after the repose of the limbs.
Lemontey.
How many languish in obscurity, who would
become great if emulation and encouragement in-
cited them to exertion !
Fénelon.
Woman is an idol that man worships, until he
throws it down.
Many benefit by the caresses they have not in-
spired; many a vulgar reality serves as a pedestal
to an ideal idol.
• T. Gautier.


26
Necessity is a severe schoolmistress.
Montaigne.
If all hearts were frank, just, and honest, the
major part of the virtues would be useless to us.
Molière.
O woman! it is thou that causest the tempests
that agitate mankind.
. 7. 7. Rousseau.
War is not as onerous as servitude.
Vauvenargues.
Glory, ambition, armies, fleets, thrones, crowns:
playthings of grown children.
Victor Hugo.
Great men are like meteors: they glitter and
are consumed to enlighten the world.
Napoleon 1.
Oh, poor hearts of poets, eager for the infinite
in love, will you never be understood ?
Mme. Louise Colet.
Irony is the purulence of our moral wounds.
De Finod.


27
WRITTEN ON A SKULL: Lamp, what hast thou
done with the flame? Skeleton, what hast thou
done with the soul? Deserted cage, what hast
thou done with the bird ? Volcano, what hast
thou done with the lava ? Slave, what hast thou
done with thy master ?
Mme. A. Ségalas.
We salute more willingly an acquaintance in a
carriage than a friend on foot.
7. Petit-Senn.
The virtuous woman who falls in love is much
to be pitied.
La Rochefoucauld.
To despise money is to dethrone a king.
Chamfort.
Instruction is to the proletary what liberty is
to the slave: the latter emancipates the body, the
former emancipates the intelligence.
E. de Girardin.
All thinkers have about the same principles,
and form but one republic.
Voltaire.
A poet is a world inclosed in a man.
Victor Hugo.


28
The devil must be very powerful, since the
sacrifice of a god for men has not rendered them
any better.
Piron.
O world! how many hopes thou dost engulf!
A. de Musset.
Women swallow at one mouthful the lie that
flatters, and drink drop by drop a truth that is
bitter.
Diderot.
It is not easy to be a widow: one must reas-
sume all the modesty of girlhood, without being
allowed to even feign its ignorance.
Mme. de Girardin.
A handsome face is a mute recommendation.
Virginity is poetry: it does not exist for fools.
Limayrac.
What woman desires is written in heaven.
La Chaussée.
Life often seems but a long shipwreck, of
which the débris are friendship, glory, and love :
the shores of our existence are strewn with them.
Mme. de Staël.


30
Alas! what does man here below? A little
noise in much shadow.
Victor Hugo.
Modesty in woman is a virtue most deserving,
since we do all we can to cure her of it.
· Lingrée.
The more hidden the venom, the more danger-
ous it is.
Marguerite de Valois.
It was Love who invented music.
Virey.
Happiness is a bird that we pursue our life
long, without catching it.
An idle man is like stagnant water: he corrupts
himself.
Laténa.
Love makes mutes of those who habitually
speak most fluently.
Mlle. de Scudéri.
He who tries to prove too much, proves nothing.
Proverb.
A woman with whom one discusses love is al-
ways in expectation of something
Poincelot.


31
O God! thy pity must have been profound
when this miserable world emerged from chaos!
A. de Musset.
I have seen more than one woman drown her
honor in the clear water of diamonds.
D'Houdetot.
Love is the sin of all men.
Du Bosc.
One knows the value of pleasure only after he
has suffered pain.
Fontenelle.
Attention is a tacit and continual compliment.
Mme. Swetchine.
The power of words is immense. A well-chosen
word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to
change defeat into victory, and to save an empire.
E. de Girardin.
One of the sweetest pleasures of a woman is to
cause regret.
Gavarni.
Solitude causes us to write because it causes
us to think
Mlle, de Guérin,


32
Love is a bird that sings in the heart of woman.
A. Karr.
Death is the only trustworthy friend of the mis-
erable.
To hate is a torment.
Ségur.
The desire to please is born in woman before
the desire to love.
Ninon de Lenclos.
Constancy is the chimera of love.
Vauvenargues.
Polygamy ought to be obligatory on physicians.
It would be only just to compel those who de- .
populate the world to repopulate it a little.
The pretension of youth always gives to a wo-
man a few more years than she really has.
Fouy.
Hope says to us at every moment: Go on! go
on! and leads us thus to the grave.
Mme. de Maintenon.
Cleanliness is the toilet of old age.
Mme. Necker.


34
The yoke of love is sometimes heavier than ,
that of all the virtues.
Montaigne.
Paradise, as described by the theologians, seems
to me too musical : I confess that I should be in-
capable of listening to a cantata that would last
ten thousand years.
T. Gautier.
We are always more disposed to laugh at non-
sense than at genuine wit; because the nonsense
is more agreeable to us, being more comformable
to our own natures: fools love folly, and wise men
wisdom.
Marguerite de Valois.
Use, do not abuse: neither abstinence nor ex-
cess ever renders man happy.
Voltaire.
Those who seek happiness in ostentation and
dissipation, are like those who prefer the light of a
candle to the splendor of the sun.
Napoleon 1.
The virtue of women is often the love of repu-
tation and quiet.
La Rochefoucauld.
The prayers of a lover are more imperious than
the menaces of the whole world.
George Sand.


35
There are those who have nothing chaste but
their ears, and nothing virtuous but their tongues.
De Finod.
The moment past is no longer : the future may
never be: the present is all of which man is the
master.
7. 7. Rousseau.
God speaks to our hearts through the voice of
remorse.
De Bernis.
A revolution is the lava of a civilization.
Victor Hugo.
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire
is to love with the mind.
T. Gautier.
Practice is to theory what the feet are to the
head.
E. de Girardin.
We like to give in the sunlight, and to receive
in the dark.
7. Petit-Senn.
Glances are the first billets-doux of love.
Ninon de Lenclos.


36
Fools never understand people of wit.
Vauvenargues.
The world is a masked ball.
Méry.
We attract hearts by the qualities we display;
we retain them by the qualities we possess.
Suard.
Gratitude is a cross-road that leads quickly to
love.
T. Gautier.
Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under
the wrinkles of age: one is lost in them, the other
hidden.
7. Petit-Senn.
There are some who are born with a sorrow in
the heart.
Lamennais.
The ruses of women multiply with their years.
Proverb.
The world boasts that it can render men
happy!
Massillon.


37 :
The reading of romances will always be the
favorite amusement of women: old, they peruse
them to recall what they have experienced; young,
to anticipate what they wish to experience.
A. Ricard.
When we combat that which we love, sooner
or later we succumb.
Marivaux.
Science seldom renders men amiable; women,
never.
Beauchêne.
Let us make no vows, but let us act as if we
had.
Rochepèdre.
Whoever is suspicious incites treason.
Voltaire.
Presumption is the daughter of ignorance.
Rivarol.
That a country may be truly free, the people
should be all philosophers, and the rulers all
gods.
Napoleon 1..
Chance is a nickname for Providence.
Chamfort.


39
Greece, so much praised for her wisdom, never
produced but seven wise men : judge of the num-
ber of fools !
Grécourt.
A man must be a fool, who does not succeed in
making a woman believe that which flatters her.
Balzac.
Vanity is the quicksand of reason.
George Sand.
Philosophy triumphs easily over evils past and
evils to come; but, present evils triumph over
philosophy.
La Rochefoucauld.
Better to know the darker sides of life, than to
slumber in dangerous illusions.
De Finod.
To be happy is not to enjoy: it is not to suffer.
Raspail.
Better to have never loved, than to have loved
unhappily, or to have half loved.
Mme. Louise Colet.
Love makes time pass, and time makes love
pass.
Proverb.


What a chimera is man! What a confused
chaos! What a subject of contradictions ! A
professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble
worm of the earth! the great depositary and
guardian of truth, and yet a mere bundle of un-
certainties ! the glory and the shame of the uni-
verse!
Pascal.
Vanity, shame, and, above all, temperament,
often make the valor of men, and the virtue of
women.
La Rochefoucauld.
One always wishes to be happy before becom-
ing wise.
Mme, Necker.
Tenderness is increased by pity.
Mme. Dufresnoy.
Love is the passion of great souls: it makes
them merit glory, when it does not turn their heads.
Mme. de Pompadour.
There is no bitterer grief than a happy remem-
brance in a day of sorrow.
A. de Musset.
In love affairs, a young shepherdess is a better
partner than an old queen.
De Finod.


41
Nothing is so embarrassing as the first tête-is-
tête, when there is everything to say, unless it be
the last, when everything has been said.
N. Roqueplan.
The great are great only because we are on our
knees. Let us rise !
Prud'homme.
A lover is never wrong.
Balzac.
Many smile who bite.
Cotgrave.
The greatest of all pleasures is to give pleasure
to one we love.
Boufflers.
Of all things that man possesses, women alone
take pleasure in being possessed.
Malherbe.
The gods have attached almost as many mis-
fortunes to liberty as to servitude.
- Montesquieu.
God created woman only to tame man.
Voltaire.
Man laughs and weeps at the same things.
Montaigne.


42
There is no greater fool than he who thinks
himself wise; no one wiser than he who suspects
he is a fool.
Marguerite de Valors.
Anything serves as a pretext for the wicked.
Voltaire.
All skulls seem to laugh. Perhaps it is at the
epitaph engraved on their tomb.
Alfred Bougeart.
Woman is the symbol of moral and physical
beauty.
T. Gautier.
Audacity of thought is seldom forgiven.
Mme. Louise Colet.
Crime, as well as virtue, has its degrees.
Racine.
The stomach is a slave that must accept every-
thing that is given to it, but which avenges wrongs
as slyly as the slave does.
E. Souvestre.
We promise much, that we may give little.
Vauvenargues.


44
Every man carries in his soul a sepulchre-
that of his youth.
0, Firmez.
Woman is a flower that exhales her perfume
only in the shade.
Lamennais.
There are in the human heart two cups, one
for joy and one for sorrow, which empty themselves
alternately.
Mme, de Maintenon.
Intelligent people make many blunders, because
they never believe the world as stupid as it is.
Chamfort.
One is always a woman's first lover.
Laclos.
All our tastes are but reminiscences.
Lamartine.
Everything falls and is effaced. A few feet un.
der the ground reigns so profound a silence, and
yet, so much tumult on the surface !
Victor Hugo
The source of all passions is sensitiveness : it
is the errors of imagination that transform them
into vices.
7. 7. Rousseau.


45
.
O unfortunates who sin without pleasure! in
your errors be more reasonable; be, at least, for-
tunate sinners. Since you must be damned, be
damned for amiable faults.
Voltaire.
Society welcomes only those who amuse, or
flatter.
De Finod.
There are hours in life when the most trifling
annoyances assume the proportions of a catas-
trophe.
E. Souvestre,
Death is the origin of another life.
Montaigne,
What a fool is he who says to a woman, Will
you? Dost not know, simpleton, that they always
pretend not to be willing ?
Alfred Bougeart.
There is in us more of the appearance of sense
and of virtue than of the reality.
Marguerite de Valois.
The world does not understand that we can
prefer anything else to it.
George Sand.


46
All our wisdom consists of but servile preju-
dices.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Repentance is an avowed remorse.
Mme. Swetchine.
Laws should be clear, uniform, precise : to in-
terpret them is nearly always to corrupt them.
Voltaire,
He who flatters you is your enemy.
Cardan.
Whenever the good done to us does not touch
and penetrate the heart, it wounds and irritates
our vanity.
E. de Girardin.
In delicate souls, love never presents itself but
under the veil of esteem.
: Mme. Roland.
A corrupted and weakened community breaks
down in immense catastrophes; the iron harrow
of revolutions crushes men like the clods of the
field; but, in the blood-stained furrows germinates
a new generation, and the soul aggrieved, believes
again.
Guizot.


47
A skeptic is not one who doubts, but one who
examines.
Sainte-Beuve.
As a man's yes and no, so his character. A
prompt yes or no marks the firm, the quick, the
decided character; and a slow, the cautious or
timid.
Lavater.
Everything is two-faced-even virtue.
Balzac.
The envious will die, but envy-never.
Molière.
In all companies there are more fools than wise
men; and the greater number always get the bet-
ter of the wiser.
Rabelais.
Woman is the Sunday of man.
Michelet.
A great career is a dream of youth realized in
mature age.
De Vigny
Sorrow makes us very good or very bad.
George Sand.
Childhood is the sleep of reason.
7. 7. Rousseau.


-
48
Love is the offspring of chance: its nurse is
habit.
La Rochefoucauld.
The highest mark of esteem a woman can give
a man is to ask his friendship; and the most sig-
nal proof of her indifference is to offer him hers.
At the banquet of life, an unfortunate guest, I
one day appeared; now, I am dying. Dying ! and
none there are to shed a tear over the tomb that
awaits me!
Gilbert.
Love! Love! Eternal enigma! Will not the
Sphinx that guards thee find an Edipus to explain
thee?
F. Pyat.
One may be better than his reputation or his
conduct, but never better than his principles.
Laténa.
At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than
of women: he is more in love with the sex than
with the individual, however charming she may be.
Rétif de la Bretonne.


49
The change of fashions is the tax that the in-
dustry of the poor levies on the vanity of the rich.
Chamfort.
There is no more agreeable companion than
the woman who loves us.
Bernardin de St. Pierre.
The knowledge of the charms one possesses
prompts one to utilize them.
Sénancourt.
So long as people are subject to disease and
death, they will run after physicians, however
much they may deride them.
La Bruyère.
Everything is good as it comes from the hands
of the Creator; everything deteriorates in the hands
of man.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Virtue, as understood by the world, is a con-
stant struggle against the laws of nature.
De Finod.
Diversity of opinion proves that things are
only what we think them.
Montaigne.


50
Men commonly injure one another without
cause, and simply to do something: as an idle pro-
menader in a garden, breaks the young branches,
and strips off the leaves of the most beautiful
flowers.
E. Souvestre,
A fool always finds some one more foolish than
he to admire him.
Boileau,
I can not see why women are so desirous of
imitating men. I could understand the wish to
be a boa constrictor, a lion, or an elephant; but
a man! that surpasses my comprehension.
T. Gautier.
Pleasure has its time; so, too, has wisdom.
Make love in thy youth, and in old age, attend to
thy salvation.
Voltaire.
If much reason is necessary to remain in
celibacy, still more is required to marry. One
must then have reason for two; and often all the
reason of the two does not make one reasonable
being.
Balzac.
. Love has compensations that friendship has
not.
Montaigne.


51
What would we not give to still have in store
the first blissful moment we ever enjoyed !
Rochepèdre.
Whatever good is said of us, we learn nothing
new,
La Rochefoucauld.
. Men declare their love before they feel it; wo-
men confess theirs only after they have proved it.
Laténa.
The human heart will always be the abyss of
reason.
There are profound sorrows which remain
stored in our souls, and which we always find
there when we are melancholy.
Mme, de Salm.
Two powerful destroyers: Time and Adver-
sity.
A. de Musset.
Men always say more evil of women than there
really is; and there is always more than is known.
Mézerai,
The best shelter for a girl is her mother's wing.


53
The virtuous action, done for virtue's sake
alone, is truly laudable.
Marguerite de Valois.
Jealousy is the sister of Love—as the devil is
the brother of the angels.
Boufflers.
Woman among savages is a beast of burden;
in Asia, she is a piece of furniture; in Europe, she
is a spoiled child.
Sénac de Meilhan.
Love makes us thin. If a codfish were a wid-
ow, she would become fat.
Provençal Proverb.
Men are women's playthings; women are the
devil's.
Victor Hugo.
The heart is like the tree that gives balm for
the wounds of man, only when the iron has
wounded it.
Chateaubriand
Always driven toward new shores, or carried
hence without hope of return, shall we never, on
the ocean of age, cast anchor for even a day!
Lamartine,


55
The dream of happiness is real happiness.
Fontanes.
The beautiful is always severe.
Ségur.
· An indiscreet man is an unsealed letter : every
one can read it.
Chamfort.
Youth is presumptuous, old age is timid : the
former aspires to live, the latter has lived.
Mme. Roland.
We never live: we are always in expectation
of living.
Voltaire,
Great thoughts spring from the heart.
Vauvenargues.
Prosperity unmasks the vices; adversity re-
.veals the virtues.
Diderot.
A man should never blush in confessing his
errors, for he proves by his avowal that he is wiser
to-day than yesterday.
7. 7. Rousseau.


56
Patience is the courage of virtue.
Bernardin de St. Pierre.
A woman without beauty knows but half of
life.
Mme. de Montaran.
No man has yet discovered the means of giving
successfully friendly advice to women-not even
to his own.
Balzac.
The world maddens some, and brutifies others.
De Finod.
If Cleopatra's nose had been shorter, the face
of the whole world would have been changed.
Pascal.
Men would be saints if they loved God as they
love women.
Saint Thomas.
We like to know the weaknesses of eminent
persons; it consoles us for our inferiority.
Mme. de Lambert. •
In love, the importance lies in the beginning.
The world knows well that whoever takes one step
will take more: it is important, then, to take the
first step well.
Fontenelle.


57
Women live only in the emotion that love gives.
An old lady confessed that she had loved much,
when young: “Ah!” she exclaimed, “the exqui-
site pain of those days !”.
; A. Houssaye.
He who has neither friend, nor enemy, is with-
out talents, powers, or energy.
Lavater.
Casuists who made absolute chastity a virtue,
have produced but false appearances in a hypo-
critical society.
Mme. Louise Colet.
Superstition: a foolish fear of the Deity.
La Bruyère.
A republic is not founded on virtue, but on the
ambition of its citizens.
Voltaire.
Inconstancy is sometimes due to levity of mind,
but oftener to satiety.
La Rochefoucauld.
There are very few things in the world upon
which an honest man can repose his soul, or his
thoughts.
Chamfort.


58
O sweet past! sometimes remembrance raises
thy long veil, then we weep in recognizing thee!
Mme. Louise Labé.
To discuss an opinion with a fool is like carry-
ing a lantern before a blind man.
De Gaston.
No faith has triumphed without its martyrs.
E. de Girardin.
Promises retain men better than services. For
them, hope is a chain, and gratitude a thread.
7. Petit-Senn.
There are few things that we know well.
Vauvenargues.
Men bestow compliments only on women who
deserve none.
Mme, Bachi.
Marble, pearl, rose, dove, all may disappear:
the pearl melts, the marble breaks, the rose fades,
the bird escapes.
T. Gautier.
When the intoxication of love has passed, we
laugh at the perfections it had discovered.
Ninon de Lenclos.


59
To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act ;
it is to make use of all our organs, functions, and
faculties. This alone gives us the consciousness
of existence.
7. 7. Rousseau.
The only confidence that one can repose in the
most discreet woman is the confidence of her
beauty.
Lemesles.
Nature, when she amused herself by giving stiff
manners to old maids, put virtue in a very bad
light. A woman must have been a mother to pre-
serve under the chilling influences of time that
grace of manner and sweetness of temper, which
prompt us to say, “One sees that love has dwelt
there."
Lemontey.
Woman is the sweetest present that God has
given to man.
Guyard.
God created the coquette as soon as he had
made the fool.
Victor Hugo.
Scripture says, “The beginning of wisdom is
the fear of the Lord.” I say, “The beginning
of wisdom is the fear of man."
Chamfort


61
The world is a picnic to which every one takes
his basket, to carry back whatever he can grasp.
Life resembles a cup of clear water which be-
comes muddy as we drink it.
Mme. Dufresnoy.
Heaven made virtue; man, the appearance.
Voltaire.
Rascal! That word on the lips of a woman,
addressed to a too daring man, often means-
angel !
Laughter is sometimes the knell of a dead illu-
sion.
De Finod.
Two thirds of life are spent in hesitating, and
the other third in repenting.
E. Souvestre.
Every one speaks well of his heart, but no one
dares to speak well of his mind.
La Rochefoucauld.
When one has a good day in the year, one is
not wholly unfortunate.
Marguerite de Valois.


62
A litigant at law should have three bags: one
of papers, one of money, and one of patience.
Proverb.
Most pleasures embrace but to strangle.
Montaigne.
Absence is a cosmetic that softens or disguises
the greatest defects.
The complement of love is passion.
George Sand.
He who prays and bites has not a little of the
devil in him.
Lavater.
When our vices leave us, we flatter ourselves
that we are leaving them.
La Rochefoucauld.
Women are an aristocracy.
Michelet.
The energies of the soul slumber in the vague
reveries of hope.
Mme. Guizot.
Remorse is the last sigh of expiring virtue.
La Beaumelle.


63
Between two beings susceptible to love, the
duration of love depends upon the first resistance
of the woman, or the obstacles that society puts in
their way.
Balzac,
The whisper of a beautiful woman can be heard
farther than the loudest call of duty.
To scoff at philosophy is to act as a true phi-
losopher.
Pascal.
Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
Massieu.
Youth and Will may resist excess, but Nature
takes revenge in silence.
A. de Musset.
If there is a fruit that can be eaten raw, it is
beauty.
A. Karr.
Devotion is the last love of women.
Saint-Evremond.
.
Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
Chamfort


64
Dress changes the manners.
manners.
Voltaire.
It's better to love to-day than to-morrow. A
pleasure postponed is a pleasure lost.
A. Ricard.
It is better to sacrifice one's love of sarcasm
than to indulge it at the expense of a friend.
O poets! what injury you have done us, and
how right Plato was to banish you from his repub-
lic! How your ambrosia has rendered more bitter
our absinth! How have we found our lives more
barren and more desolate, after having turned our
eyes toward the sublime perspectives which your
dreams have opened in the infinite !
T. Gautier.
Love, that sometimes corrupts pure bodies,
often purifies corrupt hearts.
Laténa.
The anger of a woman is the greatest evil with
which one can threaten his enemies.
Chillon.
There is a magic in the word duty, something
I know not what, which sustains magistrates, in-
flames warriors, and cools married people.
H. Dupuy.


65
The heart of a coquette is like a rose, of which
the lovers pluck the leaves, leaving only the thorns
for the husband.
Old age is a tyrant that forbids the pleasures
of youth on pain of death.
La Rochefoucauld.
Let us respect white hair-especially our own.
Petit-Senn.
How many sensations are attributed to the
heart which have no connection with it!
De Finod.
Illusions ruin all those whom they blind.
E. de Girardin.
Knowledge, wit, and courage alone excite our
admiration; and thou, sweet and modest Virtue,
remainest without honors.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Jealousy is the homage that inferiority pays to
merit.
Mme, de Puisieux,
To profess one thing and to do another occurs
very often, especially with those who continually
boast of their virtue.
T. Gautier.


66
Little things console us, because little things
afflict us.
Pascal.
There are people who are almost in love, almost
famous, and almost happy.
Mme, de Krudener.
The more an idea is developed, the more con-
cise becomes its expression: the more a tree is
pruned, the better is the fruit.
Alfred Bougeart.
The unfortunate who prays is already consoled.
Millevoye.
Women of the world never use harsh expres-
sions when condemning their rivals. Like the
savage, they hurl elegant arrows, ornamented with
feathers of purple and azure, but with poisoned
points.
Madame X. is a woman of too much wit and
cleverness to be ever despised as much as some
women less despicable.
Chamfort.
Men are so accustomed to lie, that one can not
take too many precautions before trusting them-
if they are to be trusted at all.
Marguerite de Valois.


67
Women are too imaginative and sensitive to
have much logic.
Mme. du Deffand.
A man who lives in indifference is one who has
never seen the woman he could love.
La Bruyère.
Every philosopher is cousin to an atheist.
A. de Musset.
Nothing proves better the necessity of an in-
dissoluble marriage than the instability of passion.
Balzac.
. We need the friendship of a man in great trials;
of a woman in the affairs of every-day life.
A. L. Thomas.
There are beautiful flowers that are scentless,
and beautiful women that are unlovable.
Houelle.
The only rose without thorns is friendship.
Mlle, de Scudéri.
It is to woman that the heart appeals when it
needs consolation.
Demoustier.


68
Oh! woe to him who first had the cruelty to
ridicule the name of old maid, a name which re-
calls so many sorrowful deceptions, so many suf-
ferings, so much destitution! Woe to him who
finds a target for his sarcasm in an involuntary
misfortune, and who crowns white hair with thorns!
E. Souvestre.
A flattered woman is always indulgent.
Chénier.
Nowadays we no longer laugh : we only smile,
and our pleasures come very near ennui.
De Bernis.
Men speak of what they know; women of what
pleases them.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Virtue: a word easy to pronounce, difficult to
understand.
Voltaire,
There is a greater distance between some men
and others, than between some men and the beasts.
Montaigne.
All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live
drag a remorse : the dead alone have broken their
chains.
Victor Hugo.


60
There is a wide difference between the knowl-
edge of men and the knowledge of man. To know
man, it suffices to study one's self.
Duclos.
What we call a gentleman is no longer the man
of nature.
Diderot.
Fine eyes are to the face what eloquence is to
speech.
We can not always oblige, but we can always
speak obligingly.
Voltaire.
Sensitive souls live more than others.
Duclos.
An injustice to one is a menace to all.
Montesquieu.
Virtue is so praiseworthy that wicked people
practice it from self-interest.
Vauvenargues.
The only conquests that cause no regrets, are
those made over ignorance.
Napoleon 1.
Gold is the sovereign of sovereigns.
Rivarol,


71
Love is a game at which one always cheats.
Balzac.
However talkative a woman may be, love
teaches her silence.
Rochebrune.
The hand of the poor is the purse of God.
Du Vair.
A pious man said: “If I ignored the existence
of God, I would adore the sun and women.”
Man is nothing but insincerity, falsehood, and
hypocrisy. He does not like to hear the truth,
and he shuns telling it.
Pascal.
Love places a genius and a fool on a level.
Gresset.
The egotism of woman is always for two.
Mme, de Staël
Love is everything; love is the great fact.
What matters the lover? What matters the flagon,
provided one has the intoxication?
A. de Musset.


72
O youth! thou often tearest thy wings against
the thorns of voluptuousness !
Victor Hugo.
It is easier for a woman to defend her virtue
against men, than her reputation against women.
Rochebrune.
Beauty is often but a splendid cloak which
conceals the imperfections of the soul.
T. Gautier.
To love is the least of the faults of a loving
woman.
La Rochefoucauld.
Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as
perfume is to flowers.
De Finod.
In retailing slander, we name the originator, in
order to enjoy a pleasure without danger.
Mme, de Puisieux.
We like those to whom we do good better than
those who do us good.
De Saint-Réal.
Happiness is the shadow of man: remembrance
of it follows him; hope of it precedes him.
7. Petit-Senn.


73
;
Poetry has been the guardian angel of human-
ity in all ages.
Lamartine.
Utopia! such is the name with which igno-
rance, folly, and incredulity have always charac-
terized the great conceptions, discoveries, enter-
prises, and ideas which have illustrated the ages,
and marked eras in human progress.
E. de Girardin.
The only thing that has been taught success-
fully to women is to wear becomingly the fig-leaf
they received from their first mother. Everything
that is said and repeated for the first eighteen or
twenty years of a woman's life is reduced to this:
“My daughter, take care of your fig-leaf”; “your
fig-leaf becomes you”; “your fig-leaf does not be-
come you."
Diderot.
Imperious Venus is less potent than caressing
Venus.
Love is a beggar, who still begs when one has
given him everything.
Rochepèdre.
Wrinkles disfigure a woman less than ill na-
ture.
Dupuy.


74
To a wounded heart, silence and shadow.
Balzac. .
Women should despise slander, and fear to
provoke it.
Mlle, de Scudéri.
The life of a woman is a long dissimulation.
Candor, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty — a
woman has each of these but once. When lost,
she must simulate them the rest of her life.
Rétif de la Bretonne.
There are two sorts of ruins: one is the work
of time, the other of men.
Chateaubriand.
Men call physicians only when they suffer ;
women, when they are merely afflicted with ennui.
Mme. de Genlis.
Whatever the world may say, there are some
mortal sorrows; and our lives ebb away less
through our blood than through our tears.
P. Juillerat.
Reason has never mastered an ardent passion.
Régnier.


A small number of men and women think for
the million; through them the million speak and
act.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Man, I tell you, is a vicious animal.
Molière.
Certain importunities always please wamen-
even when the importuner does not please.
That two men may be real friends, they must
have opposite opinions, similar principles, and dif-
ferent loves and hatreds.
Chateaubriand.
The more honest a man is, the less he affects
the air of a saint.
Lavater.
Modesty is the grace of the soul.
Delille.
It is as difficult to condemn illicit loves by the
laws of nature, as it is easy by human laws.
Montaigne.
The best written book is a receipt for a pot-
tage.
Voltaire.


Love works miracles every day: such as weak-
ening the strong, and strengthening the weak;
making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools;
favoring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a
word, turning everything topsy-turvy.
Marguerite de Valois.
Silence has been given to woman to better ex-
press her thoughts.
Desnoyers.
The weakness of woman gives to some men a
victory that their merit would never gain.
Human reason may cure illusions, but it can
not cure sufferings.
A. de Musset.
He who knows his incapacity, knows some-
thing.
Marguerite de Valois.
Without love, it would be sad to be a man.
Mme. du Châtelet.
It is to teach us early in life how to think, and
to excite our infantile imagination, that prudent
Nature has given to women so much chit-chat.
La Bruyère.


77
A short absence quickens love, a long absence
kills it.
Mirabeau.
No one wishes to be pitied on account of his
errors.
Vauvenargues.
How long seems the night to the sorrow that
wakes!
Saurin.
Imagination is a libertine that disrobes every-
thing it covets.
A. Ricard.
Pity often gives birth to love.
Mme, de Sartory.
Modesty is the chastity of merit, the virginity
of noble souls.
E. de Girardin.
One seeks new friends only when too well
known by old ones.
- Mme, de Puisieux.
We are never as happy, nor as unhappy, as we
fancy.
La Rochefoucauld.


78
Paradise must be a tiresome place if it is peo-
pled only by those saintly souls whose company
we so dread here below.
De Finod.
In witnessing the satisfaction with which some
people depreciate us, one would think that their
virtues fatten on our vices.
Pichot.
We know the value of a fortune when we have
gained it, and that of a friend when we have lost it.
7. Petit-Senn.
If we should leave out of conversation scandal,
gossip, commonplaces, fatuity—what silence !
Mme. Bachi.
Great souls love, weak souls desire.
Mine, de Krudener.
Most men are like plants : they possess prop-
erties which chance discovers.
De Saint-Réal.
Reflection increases the vigor of the mind, as
exercise does the strength of the body.
Lévis.


79
Women enjoy more the pleasure they give than
the pleasure they feel.
Rochepèdre.
The quarrels of lovers are like summer showers
that leave the country more verdant and beautiful.
Mme. Necker.
The woman who does not choose to love
should cut the matter short at once, by holding
out no hopes to her suitor.
Marguerite de Valois.
Who ceases to be a friend, never was a friend.
If thou canst not suffer-die!
A. de Musset.
A lover has all the virtues and all the defects
that a husband has not.
Balzac.
The world is divided into two armies. Men
make offensive war, women defensive. Love ex-
alts and excites the two parties. They meet hand
to hand. Love throws himself into their midst,
agitating his torch. But the struggle differs from
other battles : instead of destroying, it multiplies
the combatants.
S. Maréchal.


80
Women love always: when earth slips from
them, they take refuge in heaven.
Solitude is the voice of Nature that speaks
to us.
George Sand.
There are three things that women throw away:
their time, their money, and their health.
Mme. Geoffrin.
God put in man thought; society, action ; Na-
ture, revery.
Victor Hugo.
There is not a love, however violent it may be,
to which ambition and interest do not add some-
thing
La Bruyère.
The good is but the beautiful in action.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Human reason has so little confidence in itself
that it always looks for a precedent to justify its
decrees.
De Finod.


It is difficult for a woman to keep a secret:
and I know more than one man who is a woman.
La Fontaine.
Would you console yourself when you die for
parting from those with whom you liked to live ?
Think that they will be soon consoled for your
death.
Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for
loveless hearts.
Voltaire.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
Montaigne.
Women have the genius of charity. A man gives
but his gold, a woman adds to it her sympathy. A
small sum in the hands of a woman does more
good than a hundred times as much in the hands
of a man. Feminine charity renews every day the
miracle of Christ feeding a multitude with a few
loaves and fishes.
E. Legouvé.
Lovers have in their language an infinite num-
ber of words, in which each syllable is a caress.
Rochepèdre.


82
Wine colors the face, to prevent the appearance
of modesty.
A. de Musset.
It is the merit of those who praise that makes
the value of the commendation.
Mlle. de Lespinasse.
In order that a love-letter may be what it should
be, one should begin it without knowing what he
is going to say, and end it without knowing what
he has said.
Raison.
We think that not to live happily is not to live;
then, how little we live!
Before promising a woman to love only her,
one should have seen them all, or should see only
her.
A. Dupuy.
Who despises all that is despicable, is made to
be impressed with all that is grand.
Lavater.
The misanthropist is to be pitied when his de-
spair proceeds from an ardent love for the good,
the beautiful, and the true.
George Sand.


84.
The affectation of virtue which characterizes
this century would be very ludicrous, if it were not
very tiresome.
T. Gautier.
Marriage often unites for life two people who
scarcely know each other.
Balzac.
A friend is a rare book, of which but one copy
is made. We read a page of it every day, till some
woman snatches it from our hands, who sometimes
peruses it, but more frequently tears it.
After money, ennui makes more marriages than
love.
Romainville.
Remembrance ! celestial present, shadow of the
blessings which are no longer! Thou art still a
pleasure that consoles us for all those we have lost !
Women give themselves to God when the devil
wants nothing more to do with them.
Sophie Arnould.
Our country is that spot to which our heart is
attached.
Voltaire.


We meet in society many attractive women
whom we would fear to make our wives.
D'Harleville.
The world takes, from even the most candid
heart, the freshness of faith and generosity.
George Sand.
Love is a tyrant that spares no one.
Corneille.
None deserve the name of good who have not
spirit enough to be bad. Goodness, for the most
part, is but indolence, or impotence.
La Rochefoucauld.
Life is a carnival.
Souvestre.
A man who can love deeply is never utterly
contemptible.
Balzac.
The heart of a woman never grows old: when
it has ceased to love, it has ceased to live.
Rochepèdre.
It is easier to be good for everybody, than to be
good for somebody.
A. Dumas fils.


88
Features betray the temperament and charac-
ter, but the mien indicates the degrees of fortune.
La Bruyère.
He who lives but for himself lives but for a
little thing.
Barjaud,
With audacity, one can undertake anything, but
one can not accomplish everything.
Napoleon I.
It does not depend upon us to avoid poverty,
but it does depend upon us to make that poverty
respected.
Voltaire.
Truth is the sun of the intelligence.
Vauvenargues.
Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in
the hands of talent.
Ricarol.
Study is the apprenticeship of life.
Fleury.
Jealousy is a secret avowal of our inferiority.
Massillon.


That happiness may enter the soul, we must
first sweep it clean of all imaginary evils.
Fontenelle.
A mediocre speech can never be too short.
Mme. de Lambert.
We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to
be happier.
Lamotte.
A woman repents sincerely of her fault, only
after being weaned from her infatuation for the
one who induced her to commit it.
Laténa.
To live without bitterness, one must turn his
eyes toward the ludicrous side of the world, and
accustom himself to look at men only as jumping-
jacks, and at society as the board on which they
jump.
Chamfort.
It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for
the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty
every day than now and then.
Balzac.
Nature has said to woman: Be fair if thou
canst, be virtuous if thou wilt; but, considerate,
thou must be.
Beaumarchais.


90
Constraint is the mother of desires.
D'Argens.
An asp would render its sting more venomous
by dipping it into the heart of a coquette.
Poincelot.
Most women spend their lives in robbing the
old tree from which Eve plucked the first fruit.
And such is the attraction of this fruit, that the
most honest woman is not content to die without
having tasted it.
0. Feuillet.
Every great passion is but a prolonged hope.
Feuchères.
· Labor is often the father of pleasure.
Voltaire.
Not to enjoy one's youth, when one is young, is
to imitate the miser who starves beside his treasures.
Mme. Louise Colet.
Hypocrites are wicked : they hide their defects
with so much care, that their hearts are poisoned
by them.
Marguerite de Valois.


A happy jest often gives birth to another; but
the child is seldom worth the mother.
Alfred Bougeart.
Beauty, in woman, is power.
Rotrou.
Destiny: sinister burst of laughter!
Victor Hugo.
There is no man easier to deceive than he who
hopes; for he aids in his own deceit.
Bossuet.
We have but one instant to live, and we have
hopes for years.
Fléchier.
Before marriage, woman is a queen; after mar-
riage, a subject.
A woman forgives everything, but the fact that
you do not covet her.
A. de Musset.
Delicacy is to affection what grace is to beauty.
Mme. de Maintenon.
A woman submits to the yoke of opinion, but
a man rebels.
De Finod.


92
Love is a bird of passage that women await
with curiosity in youth, retain with pleasure in ma-
turer years, and allow to escape with regret when
old age creeps upon them.
A. Ricard.
The more idle a woman's hand, the more occu-
pied her heart.
S. Dubay.
The ear is the last resort of chastity: after it is
expelled from the heart, it takes refuge there.
Retif de la Bretonne.
Modesty is sometimes an exalted pride.
George Sand.
If happiness could be prolonged from love into
marriage, we should have paradise on earth.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Words are the key of the heart.
Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it
attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and
the senses.
Voltaire,


Woman is made of tongue, as fox of tail.
Proverb.
Prudery is the hypocrisy of modesty.
Massias.
The error of certain women is to imagine that,
to acquire distinction, they must imitate the man-
ners of men.
Maistre.
Time is the sovereign physician of all passions.
Montaigne.
What a cruel jest it would be to condemn those
who continually boast of their virtues, to the strict
practice of what they profess! .
De Finod.
Superstition excites storms; philosophy ap-
peases them.
Voltaire.
Wounds given to honor never heal.
Corneille.
Obstacles usually stimulate passion, but some-
times they kill it.
George Sand.


94
Man is an eternal mystery, even to himself.
His own person is a house which he never enters,
and of which he studies but the outside.
E. Souvestre.
We are by no means aware how much we are
influenced by our passions.
La Rochefoucauld.
To envy anybody is to confess ourselves his
inferior.
Mlle. de Lespinasse.
Do good to-day, since thou still livest.
Villefré.
No one is happy unless he respects himself.
7. 7. Rousseau.
There is in things a resistance superior to ideas,
but for which the world would not exist six months.
Lamennais.
Glory is a shroud that posterity often tears
from the shoulders of those who wore it, when living.
Béranger.
The most dangerous flattery is the inferiority
of those who surround us.
Mme. Swetchine.


95
It does not take twenty years for men to change
their opinions of things which had seemed to them
the truest, and most certain.
La Bruyère.
Philosophy writes treatises on old age and
friendship; Nature makes those on youth and
love.
D'Alembert.
O nude truth! O true truth! how difficult
thou art to find, and how difficult to utter!
Sainte-Beuve.
Mankind is born a fool, and is led by knaves.
Benjamin Constant.
Lover, daughter, sister, wife, mother, grand-
mother: in those six words lies what the human
heart contains of the sweetest, the most ecstatic,
the most sacred, the purest, and the most ineffable.
Massias.
The head is always the dupe of the heart.
La Rochefoucauld.
O women! you are very extraordinary children!
Diderot.


96
There are different kinds of love, but they have
all the same aim : possession.
N. Roqueplan.
• When all that is fond in our nature is most
thoroughly awakened, when we feel most deeply
and tenderly—even then, love is so conscious of its
instability that we are irresistibly prompted to ask:
Do you love me? Will you love me always?
Balzac.
Women distrust men too much in general, and
not enough in particular.
Commerson.
If there were no God, it would be necessary to
invent one.
Voltaire.
To protect one's self against the storms of pas-
sion, marriage with a good woman is a harbor in
the tempest; but with a bad woman, it proves a
tempest in the harbor.
7. Petit-Senn.
We should all be perfect if we were neither
men nor women.
Society would be a charming thing if we were
only interested in one another.
Chamfort.


97
We confess small faults in order to insinuate
that we have no great ones.
La Rochefoucauld.
A great name without merit is like an epitaph
on a coffin.
Mme, de Puisieux.
We wish others to possess, or to acquire, all
the qualities and virtues that can serve our plea-
sures or interests.
De Finod.
One can journey with delight in the ideal, but
one reposes well only in the reality.
Vieillard
There is pleasure in meeting the eyes of those
to whom we have done good.
La Bruyère.
To speak, but say nothing, is for three people
out of four to express all they think.
0. Commettant.
One is rich when one is sure of the morrow.
Chevalier.
It is more difficult to dissimulate the senti-
ments we have, than to simulate those we have
not.
De Saint-Réal.


99
Happy love counts lost moments.
Diderot.
To see each other, to profess to love each
other, to prove it, to quarrel, to hate, then to sep-
arate, that one may seek a new love: this is the
history of a moment, and of every day in the com-
edy of the world.
De Varennes.
Men do nothing excellent but by imitation of
nature.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Love is like medical science, the art of assist-
ing nature.
Dr. Lallemand.
The man who has taken one wife deserves a
crown of patience; the man who has taken two
deserves two crowns of folly.
Proverb.
The cleverest of all devils is opportunity.
Vieland,
When a woman pronounces the name of a man
but twice a day, there may be some doubt as to
the nature of her sentiments; but three times ! ...
Balzac.


IOO
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature, and em-
broidered by imagination.
Voltaire.
We live only on débris; instead of despair, we
have indifference; love itself is treated as an an-
cient illusion. Where has the soul of the world
taken refuge ?
Mme, Louise Colet.
Marriage is the true road to Paradise.
De la Ferrière.
Few are they who have been spared by cal-
umny.
George Sand.
A great name is like an eternal epitaph en-
graved by the admiration of men on the road of
time.
E. Souvestre.
To philosophize is to doubt.
Montaigne.
Love-sweet misery !
A. de Musset.
The scandal of the world is what makes the
offense: it is not sinful to sin in silence.
Molière (“Tartufe").


IOI
With women, the desire to bedeck themselves
is always the desire to please.
Marmontel.
True modesty protects a woman better than
her garments.
Conscience is the most enlightened of all
philosophers.
7. 7. Rousseau. .
Respect your wife. Heap earth around that
flower, but never drop any in the chalice.
A. de Musset.
To continue love in marriage is a science. It
requires so little to kill those sweet emotions, those
precious illusions, which form the charm of life;
and it is so difficult to maintain a man at the
height on which an exalted passion has placed
him, especially when that man is one's husband !
Mme. Reybaud.
What is a philosopher? One who opposes
nature to law, reason to usage, conscience to opin-
ion, and his judgment to error.
Chamfort.


103
If we had no defects, we should not take so
much pleasure in discovering those of others.
La Rochefoucauld.
The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish
defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.
Mme. Roland.
Superstitions, errors, and prejudices are cob-
webs continually woven in shallow brains.
De Finod.
Good sense is the master of human life.
Bossuet.
There are some places that we admire; others
that attract us, and where we would like to dwell.
La Bruyère.
Hope! hope, you miserable! There is no in-
finite mourning, no incurable evils, no eternal
hell!
Victor Hugo.
Women dress less to be clothed than to be
adorned. When alone before their mirrors, they
think more of men than of themselves.
Rochebrune.


105
Catastrophes dispose all strong and intelligent
men to philosophize.
Balzac.
Thinkers are as scarce as gold; but he whose
thought embraces all his subject, who pursues it
uninterruptedly and fearless of consequences, is a
diamond of enormous size.
Lavater.
Society is divided into two classes : the fleecers
and the fleeced.
Talleyrand.
To love is to make a compact with sorrow.
Mlle. de Lespinasse.
She is the most virtuous woman whom Nature
has made the most voluptuous, and reason the
coldest.
La Beaumelle.
Satire lies about men of letters during their
life, and eulogy after their death.
Voltaire.
Gravity is a stratagem invented to conceal the
poverty of the mind.
La Rochefoucauld.
To weep is not always to suffer.
Mme, de Genlis.


108
Our soil is formed only of human dust.
G. Legouvé.
Marriage is often the dénouement of comedies
and novels; tragedy is often the dénouement of
marriage.
De Finod.
Fate gives us parents; choice gives us friends.
Delille.
Our vices are like our nails: even as we cut
them, they grow again.
T. Bernard.
It is with the mind that we amuse ourselves,
but with the heart we never weary.
A. Dumas père.
Great men undertake great things because they
are great, and fools because they think them easy.
Vauvenargues,
The great aureole encircles only the brow of
the dead.
Chasles.
Memory is the granary of the mind, and of ex-
perience.
0. Commettant.


IIO
We often weep before we have had time to
smile.
Victor Hugo.
The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom.
There are some sorrows of which we should
never be consoled.
Mme. de Sévigné.
· It is the violence of their ideas and the blind
haste of their passion that make men awkward
when with women. A man who has blunted a little
his sensations, at first studies to please rather than
to be loved.
George Sand.
To be happy, there are certain sides of our
nature that must be entirely stultified.
Chamfort.
Moderation is the pleasure of the wise.
Voltaire,
Little girls are won with dolls—big ones with
oaths.
A. Ricard.
Do not take women from the bedside of those
who suffer : it is their post of honor.
Mme. Cécile Fée.


III
One must have a heart to know how to love;
senses do not suffice. Temperament led by the
mind leads to voluptuousness, but never to love.
De Bernis.
Reason developed and cultivated will always
be the most powerful curb to the passions : this is
the compass of all mankind.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Women, cats, and birds are the creatures that
waste the most time on their toilets.
Ch, Nodier.
In love, which is the best rewarded: respect,
or certain offenses ?
A. de Musset.
Superstition is to religion what astrology is to
astronomy: a very stupid daughter of a very wise
mother.
Voltaire.
Ridicule dishonors more than dishonor.
La Rochefoucauld.
Qualities of a too superior order render a man
less adapted to society. One does not go to mar-
ket with big lumps of gold; one goes with silver
or small change.
Chamfort.


II2
Earthly paradise: the parents young, the chil-
dren small.
Victor Hugo.
He who thinks he can do without the world
deceives himself; but he who thinks that the world
can not do without him is still more in error.
La Rochefoucauld.
Kindness is the only charm permitted to the
aged: it is the coquetry of white hair.
0. Feuillet.
Who is he who dares say all he thinks ?
De Finod.
We must consider humanity as a man who con-
tinually grows old, and always learns.
L. Figuier.
The worst of enemies are flatterers, and the
worst of flatterers are pleasures.
Bossuet.
The selfish, loving only themselves, are loved
by no one: so, selfishness is moral suicide.
e Gaston.
The cause of our grandeur may become that
of our ruin.
Arnault.


.
115
In order to do great things, we should live as
though we were never to die.
Vauvenargues.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they
revere.
Voltaire.
Woman has a smile for every joy, and a tear
for every sorrow.
Sainte-Foix.
A fool may have his coat embroidered, but it
will always be a fool's coat.
Rivarol.
Bravery escapes more dangers than cowardice.
Ségur.
Follies committed by sensible people, extrava-
gances said by clever people, crimes committed
by honest people: this is the history of revolutions.
De Bonald.
Some oblige as others insult. One is tempted
to ask reparation of them for their services.
Napoleon 1.
Misery is everywhere, and so is happiness. ·
Boufflers.


116
We all have in our hearts a secret place where
we keep, free from the contact of the world, our
sweetest remembrances.
De Finod.
Speech has been given to man to disguise his
thoughts.
Talleyrand.
It is not enough to forgive: one must forget.
Mme. de Staël.
Love is the sweetest and best of moralists.
In experiencing the ills of nature, one despises
death; in learning the evils of society, one de-
spises life.
Chamfort.
It is the enjoying, and not merely the possess-
ing, that makes us happy.
Montaigne.
Friendship that begins between a man and
a woman will soon change its name.
Sleep, next to death, is the best thing in life.
T. Gautier.


117
Many a man who has never been able to man-
age his own fortune, nor his wife, nor his children,
has the stupidity to imagine himself capable of
managing the affairs of a nation.
The pleasures of thought are remedies for the
wounds of the heart.
Mme, de Staël.
Beauty without modesty is like a flower broken
from its stem.
A beautiful woman with the qualities of a no-
ble man is the most perfect thing in nature: we
find in her all the merits of both sexes.
La Bruyère.
Time sooner or later vanquishes love; friend-
ship alone subdues time.
Mme, d'Arconville.
It is difficult for an
Poverty destroys pride.
empty bag to stand upright.
A. Dumas fils.
To know how to be silent is more difficult, and
more profitable, than to know how to speak.
Fée.


119
The heart that had never loved was the first
atheist.
L. S. Mercier.
We have not always sufficient strength to em-
ploy all our reason.
Mme. de Grignan.
We have not always enough reason to employ
all our strength.
La Rochefoucauld.
The love of woman is a precious treasure.
Tenderness has no deeper source than the heart
of woman; devotion no purer shrine; sacrifice no
more saint-like abnegation.
Sainte-Foix.
Woman is the organ of the devil.
St. Bernard.
Creation lives, grows, and multiplies: man is
but a witness.
Victor Hugo.
He who allows his happiness to depend too
much on reason, who submits his pleasures to ex-
amination, and desires enjoyments only of the
most refined nature, too often ends by not having
any at all.
Chamfort.


I20
The man who can govern a woman can govern
a nation.
Balzac.
A homely man of merit is never repulsive: as
soon as he is named, his physique is forgotten;
the mind passes through it to see the soul.
Romainville.
The best victory is to vanquish one's heart.
Mme. de Saint-Surin.
Good actions are the invisible hinges of the
doors of heaven.
Victor Hugo.
A man without patience is a lamp without
oil.
A. de Musset.
I confess I should be glad if my pleasures were
as pleasing to God as they are to me: in that case,
I should often find matter for rejoicing.
Marguerite de Valois. .
Coquetry is a continual lie, which renders a
woman more contemptible and more dangerous
than a courtesan who never lies.
De Varennes.
Nature needs little ; opinion exacts much.


I 21
A woman should never accept a lover without
the consent of her heart, nor a husband without
the consent of her judgment.
Ninon de Lenclos.
At twenty, every one is republican.
Lamartine.
Marriage is often but ennui for two.
Commerson.
Love without esteem can not reach far, nor
rise very high: it is an angel with but one wing.
A. Dumas fils.
The mistakes of woman result almost always
from her faith in the good, and her confidence in
the truth.
Balzac.
One does not reason with his heart: one either
breaks it, or yields to it.
Rochepèdre.
It is only the coward who reproaches as a dis-
honor the love a woman has cherished for him,
since she can not retaliate by making a dishonor
of his love for her.
Mme, de Lambert.


I 22
Woman has a smile for every joy, a tear for
every sorrow, a consolation for every grief, an ex-
cuse for every fault, a prayer for every misfortune,
and encouragement for every hope.
Sainte-Foix.
- Often the world discovers a man's moral worth
only when its injustice has nearly destroyed him.
De Finod.
True love is rare; true friendship, still rarer.
La Fontaine.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
Voltaire.
Love is superior to genius.
A. de Musset.
A weapon is anything that can serve to wound;
and sentiments are perhaps the most cruel weapons
man can employ to wound his fellow man.
Balzac.
To correct the faults of man, we address the
head; to correct those of woman, we address the
heart.
Beauchêne.
All our days travel toward death: the last one
reaches it.
Montaigne.


123
As soon as we have learned how to live, we
must die.
Alfred Bougeart.
Animals feed, men eat; but only men of intel-
ligence know how to eat.
Brillat-Savarin,
The science of Nature initiates the human
mind into the secret thoughts of Divinity.
Mme. d'Agoult.
It is difficult to repent of what gives us pleasure.
Marguerite de Valois.
Life is a narrow road full of encumbrances.
Soulary.
To know how to wait is the great secret of
success.
De Maistre.
A woman who plays with the love of a loyal
man is a curse ; she may close his heart for ever
against all confidence in her sex.
Men are still children at sixty.
6
Aubert.


I 24
Everything that totters does not fall.
Montesquieu.
A woman is more influenced by what she di-
vines than by what she is told.
Ninon de Lenclos.
Society is but the contest of a thousand little
opposite interests—an eternal contest between all
the vanities that clash with each other, wounded,
humiliated the one by the other, and which expi-
ate to-morrow in the disgust of a defeat the tri-
umph of to-day. To live in solitude, to avoid
being crushed in the surging throng, is what the
world calls being a nonentity—to have no exis-
tence. Poor, miserable humanity!
Chamfort.
Love, that seldom gives us happiness, at least
makes us dream of it.
Sénancourt.
To hope is to enjoy.
Saint-Lambert.
Weak souls are capable of only weak senti-
ments; strong souls of powerful sentiments.
Balzac.


125
A coquette is more occupied with the homage
we refuse her, than with that we bestow upon her.
A. Dupuy.
Woman is the most precious jewel taken from
Nature's casket, for the ornamentation and happi-
ness of man.
Guyard.
No one perfectly loves God who does not per-
fectly love some of his creatures.
Marguerite de Valois.
We seldom confide a secret: it escapes us.
Alfred Bougeart.
We should be above jealousy when there is
real cause for it.
La Rochefoucauld.
Men are the cause of women's dislike for each
other.
La Bruyère.
There are strange coincidences in life: they
occur so à propos that the strongest minds are im-
pressed, and ask if that mysterious and inexorable
fatality in which the ancients believed, is not
really the law that governs the world.
Alfred Mercier.


126
To educate a man is to form an individual who
leaves nothing behind him; to educate a woman
is to form future generations.
E. Laboulaye.
A husband is always a sensible man: he never
thinks of marrying.
A. Dumas père.
One expresses well only the love he does not
feel.
A. Karr.
Women are women but to become mothers :
they go to duty through pleasure.
Foubert.
To render a marriage happy, the husband
should be deaf and the woman blind.
Proverb.
In observing the world's movements, the most
melancholy man would become merry, and Herac-
litus would die of laughter.
Chamfort.
Self-love was born before love.
None are less eager to learn than they who
know nothing.
Suard.


127
In courting women, many dry wood for a fire
that will not burn for them.
Balzac.
Hypocrisy becomes a necessity for those who
live scandalously.
De Finod.
There is a power a hundred times more power-
ful than that of bayonets: it is the power of ideas.
Chevalier.
Those who feign love succeed better than those
who truly love.
Everybody gives advice : some listen to it;
none apply it.
Alfred Bougeart.
Nothing has ever remained of any revolution,
but what was ripe in the conscience of the masses.
Ledru-Rollin.
It is the opinion of men that makes the repu-
tation of women.
Ninon de Lenclos.
All the countries of our globe have been dis-
covered, all the seas have been furrowed: nothing
remains to traverse but the heavens.
Baron Taylor.


128
We often console ourselves for being unhappy
by a certain pleasure that we find in appearing so.
De Barthélemy.
He who has no character is not a man: he is
a thing.
Chamfort.
Circumstances that render us frail, only show
how frail we are.
Mme. de Choiseul.
The life of poets-love and tears.
Mme, Desbordes-Valmore.
Trust your dog to the end; a woman-till the
first opportunity.
Proverb.
All that is enviable is not bought: love, genius,
beauty, are divine gifts that the richest can not
acquire.
Mme. Louise Colet.
To love is a rare happiness; if it were common,
it would be better to be a man than a god.
Mme. du Châtelet.
A girl of sixteen accepts love; a woman of
thirty incites it.
A. Ricard.


130
Society is composed of two great classes : those
who have more dinners than appetite, and those
who have more appetite than dinners.
Chamfort.
An old coquette has all the defects of a young
one, and none of her charms.
A. Dupuy.
In love, as in everything else, experience is a
physician who never comes until after the disorder
is cured.
Mme. de la Tour.
The mistake of many women is to return senti-
ment for gallantry.
Fouy.
Though vices repel, they do not always sepa-
rate us from those we love.
Mme, de Rieux.
Sorrow is a torch that lights life.
It is not love that ruins us; it is the way we
make it.
Bussy-Rabutin.
Sentiment is never lascivious.
Mirabeau.


131
O youth! ephemeral song, eternal canticle !
The world may end, the heavens fall, yet loving
voices would still find an echo in the ruins of
the universe!
Jules Janin.
If as much care were taken to perpetuate a race
of fine men as is done to prevent the mixture of
ignoble blood in horses and dogs, the genealogy
of every one would be written on his face and dis-
played in his manners.
Voltaire.
Pleasure is the reward of moderation.
We finish by excusing our faults, but we always
blush at our blunders.
Politeness is the curb that holds our worser
selves in check.
Mme. de Bassanville.
What man seeks in love is woman; what woman
seeks in man is love.
A. Houssaye.
Intellectual progress, separated from moral
progress, gives a fearful result: a being possessing
nothing but brains.
A. de Gasparin.


132
We often hear bursts of laughter that sound
like sobs.
De Finod.
The present is withered by our wishes for the
future; we ask for more air, more light, more space,
more fields, a larger home. Ah! does one need
so much room to love a day, and then to die?
E. Souvestre.
Success resembles a generous wine which be-
gins by exciting the intellectual faculties, and ends
by plunging us into a stupid intoxication.
Alfred Bougeart.
One is alone in a crowd when one suffers, or
when one loves.
Rochepèdre.
· The world is satisfied with words: few care to
dive beneath the surface.
Pascal.
All the passions die with the years; self-love
alone never dies.
Voltaire.
Experience the shroud of illusions.
De Finod.


134
A woman's friendship is, as a rule, the legacy
of love or the alms of indifference.
To be virtuous, it does not suffice to will it.
La Beaumelle.
Discouragement is of all ages: in youth it is a
presentiment, in old age a remembrance.
Balzac.
It is strange that all great men should have
some little grain of madness mingled with what-
ever genius they possess.
Molière.
Society is the book of women.
7. 7. Rousseau.
One of the greatest of human sufferings is to
ask of one's self: Does God exist ?
Erckmann-Chatrian.
In a free country there is much clamor with
little suffering; in a despotic state there is little
complaint, but much grievance.
Carnot.
There are some people whose morals are only
in the piece: they never:make a coat.
Joubert.


135
Prospective happiness ! it is perhaps the only
real happiness in the world.
A. de Musset.
Woman is the nervous part of humanity; man,
the muscular.
Halle.
A woman whose great beauty eclipses all oth-
ers is seen with as many different eyes as there
are people who look at her. Pretty women gaze
with envy, homely women with spite, old men with
regret, young men with transport.
D'Argens.
The heart has reasons that reason does not
understand.
Bossuet.
Our illusions fall one after the other like the
parings of fruit: the fruit is experience; its savor
may be bitter, still it contains something that
strengthens.
G. de Nerval.
Discouragement is a passion, the most danger-
ous of all : it takes from us all our arms, all our
forces, and abandons us without pity to the snares
of voluptuousness.
Alfred Mercier.


136
Hope and fear are inseparable.
La Rochefoucauld.
O love ! only a few rays of thy sacred fire radi-
ate in this exhausted world !
Voltaire,
We are for the most part but the contempora-
ries of happiness. It is spoken of about us, but
we die without having known it.
O. Firmez.
How much one must have suffered to be weary
even of hope !
Pauline.
The realities of life are so repellent that few
dare to look them in the face, and still fewer dare
to speak of them.
De Finod.
Taste is the tact of the mind.
Boufflers.
We easily hate those whom we have given cause
to hate us.
Mme. de Lussan.
Dishonesty is the root of discussion.
Roqueplan.


137
By work of the mind one secures the repose of
the heart.
Jaucourt.
Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the vir-
tues of the wise.
Bonnard.
Philosophy, well understood, is an excellent
road to heaven.
Chastel.
If you would make a pair of good shoes, take
for the sole the tongue of a woman: it never wears
out.
Alsatian Proverb.
Friendship is impossible between men of high
social standing and men in the lower walks of life;
very difficult between a young man and a young
woman; between two beautiful women, it is but a
poetic fiction.
Our happiness in this world depends chiefly
on the affections we are able to inspire.
Mme. de Praslin.
Hypocrisy is permanent treason.


138
When women have passed thirty, the first thing
they forget is their age; when they have attained
forty, they have entirely lost the remembrance of it.
Ninon de Lenclos.
To love, or not to love, is not left to our will.
Corneille.
· Sow good services; sweet remembrances will
grow from them.
Mme, de Staël.
A lover is a man who endeavors to be more
amiable than it is possible for him to be: this is
the reason why almost all lovers are ridiculous.
Chamfort.
Some women have in the course of their lives
a double engagement to sustain, equally difficult
to break or to dissimulate: in one case the con-
tract is wanting, in the other the heart.
La Bruyère.
A marriageable girl is a kind of merchandise
that can be negotiated at wholesale, only on con-
dition that no one takes a part at retail.
A. Karr.


140
Servitude debases man to a degree that leads
him to love it.
Vauvenargues.
When one runs after wit, he is sure to catch
nonsense.
Montesquieu.
Politeness costs little and yields much.
Mme, de Lambert.
Whoever flatters betrays...
Massillon.
Compliment is the high-road to the heart of
woman.
Champcenest.
Love is a disorder that has three stages : de-
sire, possession, satiety.
Sénac de Meilhan.
Some never think of what they say; others
never say what they think.
De Finod.
. Life is a dream; death, an awakening.
La Beaumelle.
To marry is solemnly to submit one's liberty
to law, and one's welfare to caprice.


142
There are no unions that have not their dark
days; but, when we have loved each other, we re-
member it always, and those sweet remembrances,
that the heart accumulates, survive love like twi-
light.
The discovery of truth by slow, progressive
meditation is talent. Intuition of the truth, not
preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.
Lavater.
In love, a woman is like a lyre that surrenders
its secrets only to the hand that knows how to
touch its strings.
Balzac
There are in the world circumstances which
give us for masters men of whom we would not
make our valets.
Mme. Roland.
The loves of some people are but the result of
good suppers.
Chamfort.
Happiness may have but one night, as glory
but one day.
A. de Musset.


143
Every woman carries in the depths of her soul
a mysterious weapon, instinct—that virgin instinct,
incorruptible, which requires her neither to learn,
to reason, nor to know, which binds the strong
will of man, dominates his sovereign reason, and
pales our little scientific tapers.
To speak of love is to make love.
Balzac.
Women are rakes by nature and prudes from
necessity.
La Rochefoucauld.
Love is the most terrible, and also the most
generous, of the passions: it is the only one that
includes in its dreams the happiness of some one
else.
A. Karr.
To judge of the real importance of an individ-
ual, one should think of the effect his death would
produce.
Lévis.
Those who always speak well of women do not
know them enough; those who always speak ill of
them do not know them at all.
Pigault-Lebrun.


144
I admire her who resists; I pity her who suc-
cumbs; I hate her who condemns.
Alfred Bougeart.
Woman is an overgrown child that one amuses
with toys, intoxicates with flattery, and seduces
with promises.
Mme. Sophie Arnould.
Pride is the consciousness of what one is, with-
out contempt for others.
Sénac de Meilhan.
It is not so much for love of the world that we
seek it, as to escape our own companionship.
Mediocre people fear exaltation for the harm
that may result from it; though it is something
that can not be communicated to them.
Mme. de Krudener.
Distrust him who talks much of his honesty.
Dussaulx.
It is rare that, after having given the key of
her heart, a woman does not change the lock the
day after.
Sainte-Beuve.


145
Conscience is a sacred sanctuary, where God
alone has the right to enter as judge.
Lamennars.
The heart of youth is reached through the
senses; the senses of age are reached through
the heart.
Rétif de la Bretonne.
Women go further in love than most men, but
men go further in friendship than women.
La Bruyère.
Indolence is the sleep of the mind.
: Vauvenargues.
There are only two beautiful things in the world
-women and roses; and only two sweet things-
women and melons.
Malherbe.
Coquetry is a net laid by the vanity of woman
to ensnare that of man.
Bruis.
In love, one who ceases to be rich begins to
be poor.
Chamfort.
Society depends upon women. The nations
who confine them are unsociable.
Voltaire.


146
The human soul needs to be mated to develop
all its value.
7. 3. Rousseau.
Man can not live exclusively by intelligence
and self-love.
Alfred Mercier.
To remember to forget: alas ! this is what
makes us young or old.
A. de Musset.
One loves wholly but once—the first time : loves
that follow are less involuntary.
La Bruyère.
What the devil can not, women do.
Proverb.
Don Quixote is, after all, the defender of the
oppressed, the champion of lost causes, and the
man of noble aberrations. Woe to the centuries
without Don Quixotes ! Nothing remains to them
but Sancho Panzas.
A. de Gasparin.
It is never the opinions of others that displease
us, but the pertinacity they display in obtruding
them upon us.
Joubert.


148
Possession is the touchstone of love: true love
finds new ardor, frivolous love extinguishes itself
in it.
Panage.
Thought is the slave of the heart.
De Finod.
A woman is never displeased if we please sev-
eral other women, provided she is preferred : it is
so many more triumphs for her.
Ninon de Lenclos.
However powerful one may be, whether one
laughs or weeps, none can make thee speak, none
can open thy hand before the time, O mute phan-
tom, our shadow! specter always masked, ever at
our side, called To-morrow !
Victor Hugo.
Why should we complain, since we are so little
moved by the complaints of others ?
Alfred Bougeart.
I esteem the world as much as I can, and still
I esteem it but little.
Chamfort.
Temperance is the love of health-or the ina-
bility to eat or drink much.
La Rochefoucauld.


149
Vanity is the only intellectual enjoyment of
many people.
Beauty is the first gift Nature gives to woman,
and the first she takes from her.
Méré.
Since Cupid is represented with a torch in his
hand, why did they place virtue on a barrel of
gunpowder ?
Lévis.
A woman at middle age retains nothing of the
pettiness of youth ; she is a friend who gives you all
the feminine delicacies, who displays all the graces,
all the prepossessions which Nature has given to
woman to please man, but who no longer sells these
qualities. She is hateful or lovable, according to
her pretensions to youth, whether they exist under
the epidermis or whether they are dead.
Balzac.
The only way to please God is to follow the
good inclinations of our nature.
Mercier.
One of the most effectual ways of pleasing and
of making one's self loved is to be cheerful: joy
softens more hearts than tears.
Mme. de Sartory.


150
All the evil that women have done to us comes
from us, and all the good they have done to us
comes from them.
Martin.
We always find what we do not seek.
Proverb.
Love is a fever, of which the delirium is to
believe itself eternal.
Mme, Cottin.
It is a common vanity of the aged to believe
that they have always been more exemplary than
those who have come after them.
A. de Musset.
The friendship of a man is often a support;
that of a woman is always a consolation.
Rochepèdre.
There are more people who wish to be loved
than there are who are willing to love..
Chamfort.
Of all ruins, the ruin of man is the saddest to
contemplate.
T. Gautier.
A woman can be held by no stronger tie than
the knowledge that she is loved.
Mme. de Motteville.


152
The soul and the body are enemies.
A. de Musset.
God took his softest clay and his purest colors,
and made a fragile jewel, mysterious and caress-
ing—the finger of woman; then he fell asleep.
The devil awoke, and at the end of that rosy fin-
ger put-a nail.
Victor Hugr.
Marriage has its unknown great men, as war
has its Napoleons, poetry its Chéniers, and phi-
losophy its Descartes.
Balzac.
The art of praising caused the art of pleasing.
Voltaire,
Death is a passage: the more rapidly it is
crossed, the better.
Love dies of satiety, and is buried in oblivion.
La Bruyère.
A prison is never narrow when the imagination
can range in it at will.
The greatest art of an able man is to know
how to conceal his ability.
La Rochefoucauld.


155
When one seeks the cause of the successes of
great generals, one is astonished to find that they
did everything necessary to insure them.
Napoleon 1.
War is the tribunal of nations : victories and
defeats are its decrees.
Rivarol.
Would you know the qualities a man lacks,
examine those of which he boasts.
Ségur.
There is more poverty in the human heart than
misery in life.
E, de Girardin.
Laws should never be in contradiction to
usages; for, if the usages are good, the laws are
valueless.
Voltaire,
Reading is useless to some people : ideas pass
through their heads without remaining.
C. Fordan.
Repentance is a second innocence.
De Bonald.
Glory can be for a woman but the brilliant
mourning of happiness.
Mme. de Staël.


156
Marriage is a tie that hope embellishes, that
happiness preserves, and that adversity fortifies.
Alibert.
In the beginning, passions obey ; later, they
command.
Mme. de Lambert.
A prude exhibits her virtue in word and man-
ner; a virtuous woman shows hers in her con- .
duct.
La Bruyère,
Our century leans neither toward evil nor to-
ward good : it goes toward mediocrity.
A. de Gasparin.
Politeness has left our manners, to take refuge
in our clothes.
Mme, de Bassanville.
It is because honesty will soon be scarce that
we must use it to deceive the deceivers.
Pleasures are sins : we regret to offend God;
but, then, pleasures please us.
Marguerite de Valois.
Infidelities rupture love; little faults wear it
out.
Bussy-Rabutin.


157
The offender never pardons.
Proverb.
I have remarked that those who love women
most, and are most tender in their intercourse
with them, are most inclined to speak ill of them,
as if they could not forgive them for not being as
irreproachable as they wish them to be
T. Gautier.
To enjoy is not to corrupt.
Mirabeau.
It is in the eyes that the language of love is
written.
Mme. Cottin.
Reason! I have lost it; and, were it to be re-
turned to me, I would fly from it!
A. de Musset.
Politeness is a wreath of flowers that adorns
the world.
Mme, de Bassanville.
A brute always imposes silence on the delicate.
A. de Gasparin.
There are glances that have more wit than the
most subtile speech.


158
Women are the happiest beings of the creation :
in compensation for our services they reward us
with a happiness of which they retain more than
half.
De Varennes.
Repentance is not so much remorse for what
we have done, as the fear of consequences.
La Rochefoucauld.
One sneers at curls when one has no more hair;
one slanders apples when one has no more teeth.
A. Karr.
A man explodes with indignation when a wo-
man ceases to love him, yet he soon finds consola-
tion; a woman is less demonstrative when deserted,
and remains longer inconsolable.
Wounds of the heart ! your traces are bitter,
slow to heal, and always ready to reopen.
A. de Musset.
When one has been tormented and fatigued by
his sensitiveness, he learns that he must live from
day to day, forget all that is possible, and efface
his life from memory as it passes.
- Chamfort.


159
Love is a duel with pins.
How few friendships would be lasting if we
knew what our best friends say of us in our ab-
sence.
Pascal.
Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: “Who-
ever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee,
or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!”.
A woman forgives the audacity which her beauty
has prompted us to be guilty of.
Lesage.
All men are fools: to escape seeing one, one
would be compelled to shut himself in his room,
and break his mirror.
De Sade.
A coquette is a woman who places her honor
in a lottery: ninety-nine chances to one that she
will lose it.
The virtue of widows is a laborious virtue :
they have to combat constantly with the remem-
brance of past bliss.
St. Jerome.


160
Women like audacity: when one astounds them
he interests them; and when one interests them,
he is very sure to please them.
This century boasts of progress! Have they
invented a new mortal sin ? Unfortunately there
are but seven, as before—the number of the daily
falls of a saint, which is very little.
T. Gautier.
The society of women endangers men's morals
and refines their manners.
Montesquieu.
A bachelor seeks a wife to avoid solitude; a
married man seeks society to avoid the tête-à-tête.
De Varennes.
Wrinkles are the grave of love.
Sarrasin.
.
We may wager that any idea of the public, or
any general opinion, is a folly, since it has received
the approbation of a majority of the people.
Chamfort.
The reason why so few women are touched by
friendship is, that they find it dull when they have
experienced love.
La Rochefoucauld.


161
Women sometimes deceive the lover--never
the friend.
L. S. Mercier.
He who first invented raiment, perhaps invent-
ed love.
Ségur.
It is often shorter and better to yield to others
than to endeavor to compel others to adjust them-
selves to us.
La Bruyère.
Whoever blushes is already guilty : true inno-
cence is ashamed of nothing.
7. 7. Rousseau.
A woman laughs when she can, and weeps
when she will.
. . Proverb.
Conjugal Love should never put on or take off
his bandage but at an opportune time.
Balzac.
Love is like the rose: so sweet, that one always
tries to gather it in spite of the thorns.
Which is the best religion?
The most tolerant.
E. de Girardin.


162
One can stop when he ascends, but not when
he descends.
Napoleon 1.
He who thinks himself good for everything is
often good for nothing.
Picard.
Idleness is the door to all vices.
Malebranche.
Why do we dream in our sleep if we have no
soul? and, if we have one, how is it that dreams
are so incoherent and extravagant ?
Voltaire,
Generosity is but the pity of noble souls.
Chamfort.
Inclination and interest determine the will.
Talleyrand.
Extremes in everything is a characteristic of
woman.
De Goncourt.
I have tormented the present with the preoc-
cupations of the future; I have put my judgment
in the place of Providence, and the happy child
has been transformed into a care-worn man!
E. Souvestre.


163
The greatest satisfaction a woman can feel is
to know that a man whom many other women love
loves her alone.
To speak of love begets love.
Pascal.
True philosophy raises us above grandeur, but
nothing can raise us above the ennui which it
causes.
Mme, de Maintenon.
Love pleases more than marriage, for the rea-
son that romance is more interesting than history.
Chamfort.
A coquette is to a man what a toy is to a .
child : as long as it pleases him, he keeps it; when
it ceases to please him, he discards it.
One must be a woman to know how to revenge.
Mme, de Rieux.
Many wish to be pious, but none to be hum-
ble.
La Rochefoucauld.
Books follow manners; manners do not follow
books.
T. Gautier.
.


164
As soon as women are ours, we are no longer
theirs.
Montaigne.
Convictions that remain silent are neither sin-
cere nor profound.
A woman who is guided by the head, and not
by the heart, is a social pestilence: she has all the
defects of the passionate and affectionate woman,
with none of her compensations; she is without
pity, without love, without virtue, without sex.
Balzac.
The true and the false speak the same lan-
guage.
Marguerite de Valois.
Thought is the lightning of the soul.
Mme. de Bassanville,
Old men are always jealous: they are like the
greedy child who wants the cake it can not eat.
A. Ricard.
Who of us has not regretted that age when
laughter was ever on the lips !
7. 7. Rousseau,


165
In life, woman must wait until she is asked to
love; as in a salon she waits for an invitation to
dance.
A. Karr.
In the elevated order of ideas, the life of man
is glory; the life of woman is love.
Balzac.
Suitors of a wealthy girl seldom seek for proof
of her past virtue.
However virtuous a woman may be, a compli-
ment on her virtue is what gives her the least
pleasure.
Prince de Ligne.
Love, pleasure, and inconstancy are but the
consequences of a desire to know the truth.
Duclos.
Life is a combat, of which the palm is in
heaven.
Delavigne.
Vanity ruins more women than love.
Mme. du Deffand.
O oblivion! oblivion ! what a pillow for the
exhausted traveler !
Ducis.


166
If a fox is cunning, a woman in love is a thou-
sand times more so.
Proverb.
Time is a great physician : he brings us death,
We are finite beings: there can be no infinite
happiness for us. The soul that dreams it and
pursues it will embrace but a shadow.
Balzac.
When women can not be revenged, they do as
children do: they cry.
Cardan,
In condemning the vanity of women, men com-
plain of the fire they themselves have kindled.
Lingrée.
It is with happiness as with watches : the less
complicated, the less easily deranged.
Chamfort.
There are several ways to speak: to speak
well, to speak easily, to speak justly, and to speak
at the right moment.
La Bruyère.
We please oftener by our defects than by our
virtues.
La Rochefoucauld,


169
An honorable name or a good reputation is an
excellent protection against wrong-doing: we fear
to compromise it more through vanity than virtue.
The difference between love and possession is,
that one is an infinite desire, the other a satisfied
desire.
Saint-Prosper.
All passions are good when one masters them;
all are bad when one is a slave to them.
usseau.
The destiny of women is to please, to be ami-
able, and to be loved. Those who do not love
them are still more in the wrong than those who
love them too much.
Rochebrune.
In love, what we take has greater price than
what is given.
7. Petit-Senn.
One looks at a lover; one does not examine
him.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Travel improves superior wine and spoils the
poor: it is the same with the brain.


170
Glow-worms are the image of women: when
they are in the dark, one is struck with their bril-
liancy; as soon as they appear in the broad light
of the world, one sees them in their true colors,
with all their defects.
Mme. Necker.
A woman of honor should never suspect an-
other of things she would not do herself.
Marguerite de Valois.
History is only a record of crimes and mis-
fortunes.
Voltaire.
At a ball, men are the timid sex, and also the
feebler sex; for they are always the first to be
fatigued.
A. Karr.
False modesty is the most reputable of all im-
postures.
Chamfort.
Among all animals, from man to the dog, the
heart of a mother is always a sublime thing.
A. Dumas père.
We never forget what we learn with pleasure.
Alfred Mercier.


171
Simple nature, however defective, is better than
the least objectionable affectation; and, defects for
defects, those which are natural are more bearable
than affected virtues.
Saint-Evremond.
How many things have we esteemed that we
despise, and how many joys have resulted in afflic-
tions !
.Man should place himself above prejudices,
and woman should submit to them.
Mme. Necker.
Better is an error that makes us happy than a
truth that plunges us into despair.
Women never weep more bitterly than when
they weep with spite.
A. Ricard,
Love in marriage would be the realization of a
beautiful dream, if marriage were not too often the
end of it.
A. Karr,
Women have the same desires as men, but do
not have the same right to express them.
7. 7. Rousseau.


172
As yet, no navigator has traced lines of latitude
and longitude on the conjugal sea.
Balzac.
Contempt should be the best concealed of our
sentiments.
Coquettes are like hunters who are fond of
hunting, but do not eat the game.
Woman is more constant in hatred than in
love.
In love, it is only the commencement that
charms. I am not surprised that one finds plea-
sure in frequently recommencing.
Prince de Ligne.
To woman, mildness is the best means to be
right.
Mme. de Fontaines,
The reason why lovers never weary of each
other's company is because they speak always of
themselves.
La Rochefoucauld.
All the reasoning of man is not worth one sen-
timent of woman.
Voltaire.


173
The hand never tires of writing when the heart
dictates.
De Finod.
The resistance of a woman is not always a
proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her ex-
perience.
Ninon de Lenclos.
One can not imagine how much cleverness is
necessary not to be ridiculous.
Chamfort.
Oblivion: a remedy for human mise
A de Musset
Flowers that come from a loved hand are more
prized than diamonds.
Calumny is moral assassination.
The pains that excite the least pity in women
are those that we suffer for them.
Chabanon.
Time, which enfeebles criminal desires, leads
us back to legitimate affection.
Mme, de Staël.


174
Absence diminishes weak passions and aug-
ments great ones; as the wind extinguishes tapers,
but increases a conflagration...
La Rochefoucauld.
The heart that sighs has not what it desires.
Proverb.
Consideration for woman is the measure of a
nation's progress in social life.
Grégoire.
He who reckons ten friends has not one.
Malesherbes.
The heart of a loving woman is a golden sanc-
tuary, where often there reigns an idol of clay.
Limayrac.
No one is satisfied with his fortune, nor dis-
satisfied with his own wit.
Mme. Deshoulières.
Flattery is like false money: it impoverishes
those who receive it.
Mme. Voillez.
Heaven has refused genius to woman, in order
to concentrate all the fire in her heart.
Rivaro.


175
When the heart is full, the lips are silent.
An honest woman is the one we fear to com-
promise.
Balzac.
Sorrow teaches virtue.
A. de Musset.
To blame a young man for being in love is like
chiding one for being ill.
Duclos.
Enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to
thyself or to others: this is true morality.
Chamfort.
It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too
much.
Fontenelle.
Modesty is the conscience of the body.
Balzac.
Woman divine that they are loved long before
it is told them.
Marivaux.
A coquette has no heart, she has only vanity:
it is adorers she seeks, not love.
Poincelot.


176
The most lucrative commerce has ever been
that of hope, pleasure, and happiness: it is the
commerce of authors, women, priests, and kings.
Mme. Roland.
Love, unrest, and sorrow always journey to-
gether.
Proverb.
When death consents to let us live a long time,
it takes successively as hostages all those we have
loved.
Mme. Necker.
With a pretty face and the freshness of twenty,
a woman, however shallow she may be, makes
many conquests, but does not retain them: with
cleverness, thirty years, and a little beauty, a wo-
man makes fewer conquests but more durable
ones.
A. Dupuy.
There is nothing more tiresome than the con-
versation of a lover who has nothing to desire, and
nothing to fear.
Mme. de Sartory.
Manners are the hypocrisies of nations: the
hypocrisies are more or less perfected.
Balzac.


177
Love, like axioms, can not be demonstrated.
Women are never stronger than when they arm
themselves with their weakness.
Mme. du Deffand.
Let us laugh! Our fathers laughed at their
miseries, let us laugh at ours too! Why! Lisette
is not cruel, nor is my flagon broken!
Béranger.
God, who repented of having created man,
never repented of having created woman.
Malherbe.
Cupid is a traitor who scratches, even when
one only plays with him.
Ninon de Lenclos.
There are men who pride themselves on their
insensibility to love: it is like boasting of having
been always stupid.
S. de Castres.
I hate hypocrites, insolent comedians, who put
on their virtues with their white gloves.
A. de Musset.
.
We love handsome women from inclination,
homely women from interest, and virtuous women
from reason.
Amelot.


179
Women call repentance the sweet remembrance
of their faults, and the bitter regret of their ina-
bility to recommence them.
Beaumanoir.
Since love teaches how to trick the tricksters,
how much reason have we to fear it-we who are
poor simple creatures !
Marguerite de Valois.
Old acquaintances are better than new friends.
Mme. du Deffand.
. In love, the only way to resist temptation is to
sometimes succumb to it.
Mme, de Choiseul.
I have seen young ladies of twenty-five affect-
ing a childish ingenuousness which has made me
doubt their virtue.
What a woman wills, God wills.
Proverb.
When women love us, they forgive us every-
thing, even our crimes; when they do not love us,
they give us credit for nothing, not even for our
virtues.
Balzac.


180
That a liaison between a man and a woman
may be truly interesting, there must be between
them enjoyment, remembrance, or desire.
Chamfort.
Love has no age: it is always in birth.
Pascal.
With the world, do not resort to injuries, but
only to irony and gayety : injury revolts, while
irony makes one reflect, and gayety disarms.
Voltaire.
All women are equal in love.
Divorce is necessary in advanced civilizations.
Montesquieu.
The most effective coquetry is innocence.
Lamartine.
Woman, naturally enthusiastic of the good and
the beautiful, sanctifies all that she surrounds with
her affection.
Alfred Mercier.
That immense majority, the fools, who made
the laws that regulate the manners of the world,
very naturally made them for their own benefit.


181
Friendship between two women is always a
plot against another one.
A. Karr.
The prayer of Lahire : “God! do unto La-
hire what thou wouldst Lahire should do unto
Thee, if Thou wert Lahire, and if Lahire were
Thee!”
To fall in love is not difficult : the difficulty
lies in telling it.
A. de Musset.
Those who appear cold, but are only timid, as
soon as they dare to love, adore.
Mme. Swetchine.
It is beauty that begins to please, and tender-
ness that completes the charm.
Fontenelle.
Society, when it is not frantic, is idiotic.
Lamennais.
In those countries where the morals are the
most dissolute, the language is the most severe; as
if they would replace on the lips what has desert-
ed the heart.
Voltaire.


183
In love, great pleasures come very near great
sorrows.
Mlle, de Lespinasse.
“O merciful Heaven! may my last season be
still a spring !”
Béranger.
It is modesty that places in the feeble hand of
beauty the sceptre that commands power.
Hélvétius.
All or nothing is the motto of Love.
All and nothing is the motto of Hymen.
Montlasier.
Finesse has been given to woman to compen-
sate the force of man.
Laclos.
Would you know how to give ? Put yourself
in the place of him who receives.
Mme, de Puisieux.
The science of women, as that of men, must
be limited according to their powers: the differ-
ence of their characters ought to limit that of their
studies.
Fénelon.


184
All great designs are formed in solitude; in
the world, no object is pursued long enough to
produce an impression.
7. 7. Rousseau.
Virtue, with some women, is but the precaution
of locking doors.
Lemontey.
The reasonable worship of a just God who
punishes and rewards, would undoubtedly contrib-
ute to the happiness of men; but when that salu-
tary knowledge of a just God is disfigured by ab-
surd lies and dangerous superstitions, then the
remedy turns to poison.
Voltaire.
Man, like everything else that lives, changes
with the air that sustains him.
Taine.
A woman by whom we are loved is a vanity;
a woman whom we love is a religion.
E. de Girardin.
All our opinions, sentiments, principles, preju-
dices, religious beliefs, are really but the result of
birthplace : how different would they be, had we
been born and reared at the antipodes of our re-
spective lands.
De Finod.


185
Men have made of Fortune an all-powerful
goddess, in order to be made responsible for all
their blunders.
Mme. de Staël.
One is no more the master of his impressions
than of his coughing or sneezing.
Mme, du Deffand.
Women are often ruined by their sensitiveness,
and saved by their coquetry.
Mlle, Azaïs.
If you would succeed in the world, it is ne-
cessary that, when entering a salon, your vanity
should bow to that of others.
Mme. de Genlis.
The head, however strong it may be, can ac-
complish nothing against the heart.
Mlle, de Scudéri.
Rivals who blow out each other's brains for
the eyes of a coquette, prove that they have no
brains.
A. Ricard.
A languid heart is tender; sadness makes love
ferment.
7. 7. Rousseau.


186
Our virtues are often but vices in disguise.
La Rochefoucauld.
In a tête-à-tête, a woman speaks in a loud tone
to the man she is indifferent to, in a low tone to
the one she begins to love, and keeps silent with
the one she loves.
Rochebrune.
Women who have not fine teeth laugh only with
their eyes.
Mme, de Rieux.
Dignities change men's morals.
Venus always saves the lover whom she leads.
Delatouche.
Mothers are the only goddesses in whom the
whole world believes.
Celebrity is the chastisement of merit, and the
punishment of talent.
Chamfort.
Women often deceive to conceal what they
feel; men to simulate what they do not feel-love.
E. Legouvé.


187
Many weep for the sin, while they laugh over
the pleasure.
Marguerite de Valois
There is nothing directly moral in our nature
but love.
A. Comte.
Many have sought roses and found thorns.
The tears of a young widow lose their bitter-
ness when wiped by the hands of love.
Benevolence rejuvenates the heart, exercise,
the memory, and remembrance, life.
Mme. de Lespinasse.
How many could be made happy with the hap-
piness lost in this world.
Lévis.
A man's passions, tastes, and opinions are dis-
covered by his admirations.
C. Nodier.
Cold natures have only recollections; tender
natures have remembrances.
Mme, de Krudener.
Social usages : a respect sincere or feigned for
absurd forms.


188
Languages begin by being a music, and end by
being an algebra.
. . Ampère.
The waltz is the charging step of love.
H. Murger.
To be happy is not to possess much, but to
hope and to love much.
Lamennais.
The world is a book, the language of which is
unintelligible to many people.
Méry.
Masked balls are a merciful institution for ugly
women.
Man is not depraved by true pleasures, but by
false ones.
De Lacretelle.
Love for old men is sun on the snow: it daz-
zles more than it warms them.
7. Petit-Senn.
Sometimes we must have love, either as a de-
sirable good or an inevitable evil.
Bussy-Rabutin.


192
If eminent men whose history has been written
could return to life, how they would laugh at what
has been said of them.
De Finod.
He who pretends to know everything proves
that he knows nothing.
Le Bailly.
The attainment of our greatest desires is often
the source of our greatest sorrows.
Marriage communicates to women the vices of
men, but never their virtues.
Fourier.
The remembrance of the good done those we
have loved, is the only consolation left us when
we have lost them.
Demoustier.
Pleasure and pain, the good, and the bad, are
so intermixed that we can not shun the one with-
out depriving ourselves of the other.
Mme, de Maintenon.
It is not always for virtue's sake that women
are virtuous.
La Rochefoucauld.


193
We find nothing good in life but what makes
us forget it.
Mme. de Staël.
Coquetry is the desire to please, without the
want of love.
Rochepèdre.
At fifteen, to dance is a pleasure; at twenty-
five, a pretext; at forty, a fatigue.
A. Ricard.
The weaknesses of women have been given
them by nature to exercise the virtues of men.
Mme. Necker.
Love without desire is a delusion: it does not
exist in nature.
Ninon de Lenclos.
Hell is paved with women's tongues.
Abbé Guyon.
Woman is the heart of man.
Leroux.
If the young knew-if the old could !
Proverb
The only secret a woman guards inviolably is
that of her age.


194 ,
The morals of the world are only casuistry.
The worst of all misalliances is that of the
heart.
Chamfort.
Homeliness is the best guardian of a young
girl's virtue.
Mme, de Genlis.
The world ceases to be a pleasure when it
ceases to be a speculation.
Love is the poetry of the senses.
Balzac,
One wearies delightfully with women.
Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end
of everything.
Lacordaire.
Philosophy teaches us to bear with calmness-
the misfortunes of our friends.
Nothing is more difficult than to choose a good
husband-unless it be to choose a good wife.
7. 7. Rousseau.


195
· Love begins too well to end well.
Daumas,
What a husband forbids, a wife desires.
Proverb.
The rudest man, inspired by passion, is more
persuasive than the most eloquent man, if unin-
spired.
La Rochefoucauld.
There is no game of chance more hazardous
than marriage.
7. David.
Whoever has learned to love, has learned to
be silent.
Mme, de Sartory.
All bow to virtue—and then walk away.
De Finod.
Women are happier in the love they inspire
than in that which they feel: men are just the
contrary.
Beauchêne.
Love is a torrent that one checks by digging a
bed for it.
Commerson.


196
A woman is a well-served table, that one sees
with different eyes before and after the meal.
It is necessary to be almost a genius to make
a good husband.
Balzac.
We accuse women of insincerity without per-
ceiving that they are more sincere with us than
with themselves.
Pleasure may come of illusion, but happiness
can only come of reality.
Chamfort.
The duration of passion is no more in our
power than the duration of life.
La Rochefoucauld.
To swear to love always is to affirm that two
beings essentially changeable will never change.
The prodigality of women has reached such
proportions that one must be wealthy to have one
for himself: we have no other resource than to
love the wives of others.
A. Karr.
The world forgives with difficulty the fact that
one can be happy without it.


197
We quarrel with unfortunates to be exempted
from pitying them.
Vauvenargues.
Poverty of the soul is worse than that of for-
tune.
Mme, de Lambert.
To enjoy reading is to transform wearisome
hours into delightful ones.
Montesquieu.
“Well! sage Evhemere, what have you seen in
all your travels?” “Follies!”
Voltaire,
Who elevates himself isolates himself.
Rivorol.
A beautiful woman pleases the eye, a good
woman pleases the heart : one is a jewel, the other
a treasure.
Napoleon 1.
Memory records services with a pencil, injuries
with a graver.
De Ségur.
Reason is the torch of friendship, judgment its
guide, tenderness its aliment.
De Bonald.


193
There is in hypocrisy as much folly as vice: it
is as easy to be honest as to appear so.
ume. de Stail.
Wit is a zero added to our moral qualities; but
which, standing alone, represents nothing.
C. Jordan.
Some women boast of having never accorded
anything; perhaps it is because they have never
been asked anything.
The anticipation of pleasure often equals the
pleasure itself.
Fabre d'Eglantine.
The greatest miracle of love is that it cures
coquetry.
La Rochefoucauld.
Hope is a sarcasm.
Alfred Mercier (" La fille du prêtre ").
The misfortune of those who have loved is that
they can find nothing to replace love.
Duclos.
Men make laws; women make manners.
De Ségur.


199
Do you wish a portrait that is not flattered ?
Ask a woman to make one of her rival.
De Propriac.
Vows of love prove its inconstancy.
Marmontel.
Who has not what he loves, must love what he
has.
Bussy-Rabutin.
A husband is a plaster that cures all the ills
of girlhood.
Molière,
The beginning and the decline of love mani-
fest themselves in the embarrassment that one
feels in the tête-à-tête.
La Bruyère.
· 'The wealthiest man is he who is most eco-
nomical; the poorest is he who is most miserly.
Chamfort.
O kiss! mysterious beverage that the lips of
lovers pour into each other, as into thirsty cups !
A. de Musset.
Love should dare everything when it has
everything to fear.
Saurin.


200
Hearts agree; minds dispute.
Préault.
Vows are the false money that pays for the sac-
rifices of love.
Ninon de Lenclos.
Woman is a creature between man and the
angels.
Balzac.
Everything comes and goes. To-day in joy,
to-morrow in sorrow. We advance, we retreat, we
struggle ; then, the eternal and profound silence
of death!
Victor Hugo.
One loves more the first time, better the
second.
Rochepèdre.
Beggars are the vermin that attach themselves
to the rich.
There never has been a nation that has not
looked upon woman as the companion or the con-
solation of man, or as the sacred instrument of his
life, and that has not honored her in those char-
acters.
A. de Musset.


201
Men are like money: we must take them for
their value, whatever may be the effigy.
Mme. Necker.
Words really flattering are not those which we
prepare, but those which escape us unthinkingly..
Ninon de Lenclos.
Woman lives by sentiment, man by action.
Balzac.
There is no endurable slavery but that of the
heart.
Great minds comprehend more in a word, a
look, a pressure of the hand, than ordinary men in
long conversations, or the most elaborate corre-
spondence.
Lavater.
Woman is the altar of love.
The laws of love unite man and woman so
strongly that no human laws can separate them.
Balzac.
Who of us has not shed tears over the tomb of
a loved one!
Chateaubriand.


203
The friends of our friends are our friends.
Proverb.
Men do not always love those they esteem;
women, on the contrary, esteem only those they
love..
S. Dubay.
When I cast my bread to the birds on the
shores, the waves seemed to say: Hope! for, when
thou comest to want, God will return thy bread!
God still owes it to me.
Hégésippe Moreau.
It is a misfortune for a woman never to be
loved, but it is a humiliation to be loved no more.
Montesquieu.
Fortune and caprice govern the world.
La Rochefoucauld.
The same conditions should be made in mar-
riage that are made in the case of houses that one
rents for a term of three, six, or nine years, with
the privilege of becoming the purchaser if the
house suits.
Prince de Ligne.
The way to make friendships that will last long
is to be long in making them.


204
Circumstances do not make men : they discover
them.
Lamennais.
One should choose a wife with the ears, rather
than with the eyes.
Proverb.
The less clothing Love wears, the warmer he is.
Shallow men speak of the past, wise men of
the present, and fools of the future.
Mme. du Deffand.
Love seldom dies a sudden death
Saurin.
Venus was the daughter of the waves. She
gave birth to Love: we can expect nothing but
tempest from a daughter of the sea.
Marriage was instituted as a penance for the
sins of celibacy.
For a woman to be at once a coquette and a
bigot is more than the meekest of husbands can
bear: women should mercifully choose between
the two.
La Bruyère.


205
· Remembrance of the dead soon fades. Alas!
in their tombs, they decay more slowly than in our
hearts.
Victor Hugo.
When we read that the lost sheep is preferred
to the rest of the flock, we are tempted to think
that penitence is preferable to innocence.
There are hypocrites of vices as well as of vir-
tues.
Duclos.
Take the first advice of a woman, not the sec-
ond.
Proverb.
Marriage is a treaty in which the conditions
should be mutual.
Balzac..
Love is the sweetest of errors-an error of the
heart, of which it is cruel to be disabused.
Many consent to be virtuous, only on condi-
tion that everybody will give them credit for it.
De Finod.


206
A misanthrope was told of a young friend of
his: “Your friend has no experience of the world;
he knows nothing about it.” “True; but he is
already as sad as if he knew all about it.”
Paradise is open to all kind hearts. God wel-
comes whoever has dried tears, either under the
crown of the martyrs, or under wreaths of flowers.
Béranger.
Men say more evil of women than they think :
it is the contrary with women toward men.
S. Dubay.
When we imagine that we love, it is the pres-
ence of the loved one that deceives us : when we
truly love, it is absence that proves it.
Lingrée.
The presence of a young girl is like the pres-
ence of a flower: the one gives its perfume to all
that approach it, the other her grace to all who
surround her.
L. Desnoyer's.
Love, that is but an episode in the life of man,
is the entire story of the life of woman.
Mme, de Staël,


208
People who love each other most before mar-
riage, are sometimes those who love each other
least after it.
A. Dupuy.
Oh! why is daily bread indispensable to the
poet and to the artist! This inexorable necessity
darkens for them the joys of nature and the radi.
ations of the beautiful.
Mme. Louise Colet.
Women never lie more astutely than when
they tell the truth to those who do not believe
them.
Comedies acted on life's stage, behind the
scenes, are much more spirited than those acted
in sight of the audience.
De Finod.
The eye is the messenger of the heart.
Quarrels of lovers-renewals of love.
Proverb.
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires,
man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.
Lamartine.


209
A woman who has not seen her lover for the
whole day considers that day lost for her: the ten-
derest of men considers it only lost for love.
Mme, de Salm.
Man thinks, and, at once, becomes the master
of the beings that do not think.
Buffon.
We have sometimes loved so much that there
is nothing left in our hearts that enables us to love
again.
Rochebrune.
It is always imprudent to marry a woman for
love in whose bosom you inspire none.
Mme, d'Arconville.
Life is a desert waste : to beguile the ennui of
the journey across it, heaven gave us the kiss.
S. Maréchal.
Women ask if a man is discreet, as men ask if
a woman is pretty.
Friendship makes more happy marriages than
love does.


210
What old men can do always falls short of
what they desire.
A. Ricard.
In love, old wood burns better than green.
The art of conversation consists less in show-
ing one's own wit than in giving opportunity for
the display of the wit of others.
La Bruyère.
We take less pains to be happy than to appear
so.
La Rochefoucauld.
The art of putting the right men in the right
places is first in the science of government; but,
that of finding places for the discontented is the
most difficult.
Talleyrand.
One writes well only of what he has seen or
suffered.
De Goncourt.
Old men who preserve the desires of youth lose
in consideration what they gain in ridicule.
Napoleon 1.


211
Only the victims of love know how to soften
its pains.
. Mme. de Graffigny.
It takes twenty years to bring man from the
state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal,
as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his
reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty cen-
turies to know his structure; it would take eter-
nity to know something of his soul : it takes but
an instant to kill him.
Voltaire.
Esteem is the strongest of all sympathies.
E. de Girardin.
One could make a great book of what has not
been said.
Rivarol.
Equality is not a law of nature. Nature has
made no two things equal : its sovereign law is
subordination and dependence.
Vauvenargues.
To be happy, one must ask neither the how
nor the why of life.
With time and patience, the mulberry-leaf be-
comes satin.
Proverb.


212
Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs.
Helvétius.
To make love when one is young and fair is a
venial sin : it is a mortal sin when one is old and
ugly.
De Bernis,
The hell for women who are only handsome is
old age.
Saint-Evremond,
A woman would be in despair if nature had
formed her as fashion makes her appear.
Mlle. de Lespinasse.
Most women caress sin before embracing pen-
itence.
Fontenelle.
Solitude is the consolation of hearts betrayed.
In love, she who gives her portrait promises
the original.
A. Dupuy.
All our dignity lies in our thoughts.
Pascal,


213
With women, friendship ends when rivalry be-
gins.
-“Respect my independence! Lisette alone
has the right to smile when I say: I am indepen.
dent!”
Béranger.
It costs more to satisfy a vice than to feed a
family.
Balzac.
Prudery is often the mantle chosen to conceal
triumphant vice.
There are but three classes of men : the retro-
grade, the stationary, the progressive.
Lavater.
Republics come to an end by luxurious habits;
monarchies by poverty.
Montesquieu.
Solitude is the religion of the soul.
A. Dumas père.
Often a man is irregular in his conduct solely
because his position does not allow him the mo-
notonous pleasures of marriage.
La Beaumelle.


214
Friendship between women is only a suspen-
sion of hostilities.
We ought to die when we are no longer loved.
Mme. Sophie Gray.
It is the path of the passions that has conduct-
ed me to philosophy.
7. 7. Rousseau.
A great fondness for animals often results from
a knowledge of men.
Love is rather the god of sensation than of
sensibility.
Ninon de Lenclos.
In a tête-à-tête, we are never more interrupted
than when we say nothing.
Mlle. de Lespinasse.
The woman who throws herself at a man's head
will soon find her place at his feet.
L. Desnoyers.
Prayer is the dew of the soul ravaged by ad-
versity, and oftentimes the only bread of the poor.
A. Poincelot.


215
We dream such beautiful dreams, that we
often lose all our happiness when we perceive that
they are only dreams.
Joy is the ray of sunshine that brightens and
opens those two beautiful flowers, Confidence and
Hope.
E. Souvestre.
There is but one kind of love, but there are a
thousand different copies of it.
La Rochefoucauld.
To invite a guest is to take the responsibility
of his happiness during his stay under our roof.
Brillat-Savarin.
He who can not govern his passions should
kill them, as we kill a horse when we can not mas-
ter it.
Chamfort.
To talk in a tête-à-tête of the mysteries of love,
is to play with fire on a barrel of gunpowder.
Lévis.
A woman can not guarantee her heart, even
though her husband be the greatest and most per-
fect of men.
George Sand.


216
Folly always deserves its misfortunes.
A. Préault.
Woman seldom hesitates, to sacrifice the hon-
est man who loves her, without pleasing her, to
the libertine who pleases her, without loving her.
A. Ricard.
Spring is the painter of the earth.
Alcuin.
What saves the virtue of many a woman is
that protecting god, the impossible.
Balzac.
We always find wit and merit in those who
look at us with admiration.
O Love! when thou findest thy true apostles
on earth united in kisses, thou commandest their
eyelids to close like veils, that they may not see
their happiness !
A. de Musset.
Let us believe what we can, and hope for the
rest.
De Finod.
A woman and her .servant, acting in accord,
would outwit a dozen devils.
Proverb.


218
Very few people know what love is, and very
few of those that do, tell of it.
Mme. Guizot.
The miser is poor to the extent of all that he
has not yet acquired.
Suspense, of all the torments, is the most diffi-
cult to endure.
A. de Musset.
A woman full of faith in the one she loves is
but a novelist's fancy.
Balzac.
Grief has two forms of expression, laughter and
tears; and tears are not the saddest.
L. Blanc.
There are some illusions that are like the light
of the day: when lost, everything disappears with
them.
Mme. Dufresnoy.
“He swore to me an eternal love. Eternity
has lasted but one morning!”
Millevoye.
Ignorance is less distant from truth than preju-
dice.
Diderot.


222
When a woman is no longer attractive she
ceases to be inconstant.
All men have desires, but all men have not love.
Every mortal is relieved by speaking of his
misfortunes.
A. Chénier.
Love extinguished can be rekindled: love worn
out-never.
From the day one can not conceal a defect, one
exaggerates it.
Alfred Bougeart.
A brother is a friend given by nature.
G. Legouvé.
The love of the past is often but the hatred of
the present.
Dorion.
God created in our misery the kisses of chil-
dren for the tears of mothers.
E. Legouvé.
One may ruin himself by frankness, but one
surely dishonors himself by duplicity.
Vieillard.


223
The greatest of all sins is the sin of love: it is
so great that it takes two persons to commit it.
Cardinal Le Camus.
What renders the vanity of others unbearable
to us is the wound it inflicts on ours.
La Rochefoucauld.
Idleness is not a vice: it is a rust that destroys
all virtues.
Duc de Nemours.
If a woman says to you, “I will never see you
again!” hope; but, if she says, "Notwithstanding,
I shall always see you with pleasure "-travel.
There are some passions so sweet that they ex-
cuse all the follies they provoke..
Rochebrune.
The husband who is not loved will pay for it
dearly, some day.
Proverb
Hope, deceitful as it is, carries us agreeably
through life.
La Rochefoucauld. .
The remembrance of the tears I have shed is
the only good left me in the world.
A. de Musset.


225
Women are coquettes by profession.
ousseau,
The discovery of a new dish does more for
the happiness of man than the discovery of a star.
Brillat-Savarin.
Can we not seek the author of life but in the
obscure labyrinth of theology ?
Voltaire.
Heaven protect me from my friends; I will
protect myself against my enemies.
Proverb.
Love is the harvest of beauty.
Pleasure is the flower that passes; remem-
brance, the lasting perfume.
Boufflers.
Marriage is sometimes only a long quarrel.
Any confidence is dangerous that is not com-
plete.
La Bruyère.
There are no marriages in paradise-thank
Heaven!


229
Self-love is a balloon filled with wind, from
which tempests emerge when pricked.
Voltaire.
To amuse the public: what a sad vocation for
a man who thinks !
The astronomer thinks of the stars, the natu-
ralist of nature, the philosopher of himself.
Fontenelle.
To love is to ask of another the happiness that
is lacking in ourselves.
Rochepèdre.
· If man knew well what life is, he would not
give it so inconsiderately.
Mme. Roland.
The things of the earth are not worth our at-
tachment to them.
Nicole.
Woman is a delightful musical instrument, of
which love is the bow, and man the artist.
Stendhal.
Conscience is the voice of the soul; passion,
the voice of the body.
7. 7. Rousseau.


230
One triumphs over calumny only by disdain-
ing it.
Mme. de Maintenon.
In this advanced century, a girl of sixteen
knows as much as her mother, and enjoys her
knowledge much more.
Virtue is the politeness of the soul.
Balzac.
Self-love is always the mainspring, more or less
concealed, of our actions; it is the wind which
swells the sails, without which the ship could not
go.
Mme. du Châtelet.
The greatest evidence of demoralization is the
respect paid to wealth.
There is among men such intense affectation
that they often boast of defects which they have
not, more willingly than of qualities which they
have.
George Sand.
The best lesson is that of example.
La Harpe.


231
“The French Guard dies, but does not surren-
der!” (General Cambronne, at Waterloo.)
Women surrender, and do not die.
Ch. de Bernard.
There is more merit in subduing a passion than
in avenging an injury.
Mascaron.
It is a great misfortune not to have enough wit
to speak well, or not enough judgment to keep
silent.
La Bruyère.
Love is blind : that is why he always proceeds
by the sense of touch.
The temperament of artists is such that they
should be judged differently from the vulgar.
De Finod.
What has become of those personages who
made so much noise in the world? Time has
made one step, and the face of the earth is re-
newed.
Chateaubriand.
A gilded bit does not make the horse better.
Proverb.


232
A man who is pleased with no one is more un-
happy than he who pleases no one.
De Saint-Réal.
In love, the husband sees but the statue: the
soul is shown only to the lover.
Crébillon.
Evil is so common in the world that it is easy
to believe it natural to man.
F. Soulie.
Every man holds in his hand a stone to throw
at us in adversity.
Mme, Bachi.
Heroes are men who set out to be demi-gods
in their own eyes, and who end by being so at
certain moments by dint of despising and combat-
ing all humanity.
George Sand.
How many coward passions hide themselves
under the mask of puritanism !
Mme. Louise Colet.
Politeness is the expression or imitation of so-
cial virtues.
Duclos.


233
Woman : man's first domicile.
Diderot.
“I will love you always !” This is the eternal
lie that lovers tell with the greatest sincerity.
Sympathy is a relationship of the heart and
mind: between two persons of different sex the
senses enter the relationship.
A. Dupuy.
Very few people know how to enjoy life. Some
say to themselves : “I do this or that, therefore I
am amused: I have paid so many pieces of gold,
hence I feel so much pleasure”; and they wear
away their lives on that grindstone.
A. de Musset.
Love renders chaste the most voluptuous plea-
sures.
Virey.
At every stage of life he reaches, man finds
himself but a novice.
Chamfort.
It is strange that thought should depend upon
the stomach, and still that men with the best
stomachs are not always the best thinkers.
Voltaire.


239
Thou makest the man, O Sorrow! Yes, the
whole man, as the crucible gold!
Lamartine.
Love is the union of a want and a sentiment.
Balzac.
Manners, morals, customs change: the passions
are always the same.
Mme. de Flahaut.
Jest with life: for that only is it good.
Voltaire.
SDB


CONCLUSIVELY.
One loves because he loves: this explanation
is, as yet, the most serious and the most decisive
that has been found for the solution of this prob-
lem.
True, the poisonous breath of the world de-
stroys our illusions, but they resuscitate at once
when a ray of love falls upon our benumbed hearts,
as the warmth of the sun revives the poor flowers
withered by the ices of winter.
De Finod.
Society, that distills so many poisons, resembles
that serpent of India whose abode is the leaf of
the plant that cures its bite: society usually offers
a remedy for the sufferings it causes.
A. de Musset.


244
Bernard, Saint, 119.
Caron, 21.
Bernard, Th., 108.
Castres, De, 177.
Bernardin de St. Pierre, 49, Chabanon, 173.
56, 70.
Chamfort, 12, 18, 27, 37, 44,
Bernis, De, 35, 68, III, 49, 55, 57, 59, 63, 66, 85,
212.
89, 96, 101, 106, 110, III,
Blanc, L., 218.
114, 116, 119, 124, 126, 128,
Blondel, 238.
130, 133, 138, 139, 142, 145,
Bocage, Mme. du, 236.
147, 148, 150, 153, 158, 160,
Boëtie, De la, 52.
162, 163, 166, 170, 173, 175,
Boileau, 7, 50, 52.
178, 180, 186, 190, 194, 196,
Bonald, De, 115, 139, 155, 199, 202, 205, 217, 220, 224,
197.
226, 233, 235, 236.
Bonnard, 137.
Champcenest, 140.
Bosc, Du, 13, 31, 87.
Chasles, 108.
Bossuet, 91, 103, 112, 135. Chateaubriand, 22, 53, 60, 70,
Boufflers, II, 41, 53, 115, 136, 74, 75, 87, 153, 201, 231.
225.
Chatelet, Mme. du, 76, 128,
Bougeart, Alfred, 42, 45, 52, 230.
66, 91, 123, 125, 127, 132, Chênedollé, 70.
144, 148, 222.
Chénier, A., 68, 222, 228.
Bourdaloue, 17.
Chevalier, 97, 127.
Brignicourt, 154.
Chillon, 64.
Brillat - Savarin, 16, 23, 43, Choiseul, Mme. de, 128,
123, 215, 225, 226.
179.
Bruis, 145.
Colet, Mme. Louise, 26, 39,
Bruix, De, 38.
42, 57, 90, 100, 128, 133,
Buffon, 209.
208, 221, 232, 236, 237.
Bussy-Rabutin, 130, 151, 156, Colombat, 10.
168, 188, 199.
Comettant, O., 97, 108.
Commerson, P., 96, 121, 195.
Comte, A., 22, 33, 187.
Campan, Mme., 238.
Conches, De, 168.
Cardan, 46, 166.
Condorcet, 18, 22.
Carnot, 134.
Constant, Benjamin, 95.
C.


249
Nodier, Charles, 8, 111, 187, Racine, 42.
191.
Raison, 82.
P.
Raisson, 33.
Palissot, 38.
Raspail, 39.
Panage, 148.
Raynal, 9.
Parfait, Paul, 109.
Régnier, 74.
Parny, 15.
Rétif de la Bretonne, 48, 74,
Pascal, 40, 56, 63, 66, 71, 132, 92, 106, 145.
159, 163, 180, 212, 217, 236, Reybaud, Mme., 101.
237.
Ricard, A., 8, II, 21, 37, 60,
Pauline, 136.
64, 77, 92, 104, 110, 128,
Péna, Dela, 226.
164, 168, 171, 185, 193, 210,
Petit-Senn, J., 7, 15, 17, 27, 216.
35, 36, 43, 58, 65, 72, 78, Rieux, Mme. de, 14, 130, 141,
96, 169, 188.
154, 163, 186.
Picard, 162.
| Rivarol, 37, 54, 69, 88, I5,
Pichot, A., 43, 78, 118. 139, 155, 174, 197, 211.
Pigault-Lebrun, 143. Rochebrune, 20, 71, 72, 103,
Piron, 28.
104, 169, 186, 209, 223.
Poincelot, 30, 33, 90, 141, 175, Rochepèdre, 37, 51, 73, 79,
178, 214, 235.
81, 86, 121, 132, 150, 167,
Pompadour, Mme. de, 40. 193, 200, 229.
Praslin, Mme. de, 137. Roland, Mme., 46, 55, 103,
Préault, A., 83, 200, 216. 142, 151, 176, 229.
Propriac, De, 199.
Rollin, 9.
Prud'homme, 41.
Romainville, 13, 84, 120.
Puisieux, Mme. de, 65, 72, Romieu, 147.
77, 83, 97, 183.
Roqueplan, Nestor, 41, 96,
Pyat, Félix, 48.
136.
Rotrou, 91.
Rousseau, J. J., 8, 11, 20, 24,
Quesnel, 22.
25, 26, 35, 44, 46, 47, 49, 52,
55, 59, 65, 68, 75, 80, 83,
R.
85, 87, 92, 94, 99, 101, 104,
Rabelais, 8, 10, 47.
109, III, 129, 134, 141, 146,
Q.


250
229.
147, 151, 161, 164, 169, 171, Sénancourt, 49, 124.
184, 185, 194, 214, 225, 227, Sévigné, Mme. de, 14, 67, 110,
114.
Soulary, 123, 189.
S.
Soulié, Frédéric, 232, 236.
Sade, De, 159.
Souvestre, E., II, 18, 24,
Sainte-Beuve, 15, 19, 47, 95, 42, 45, 50, 61, 68, 85, 86,
141, 144.
94, 100, 132, 153, 162, 215,
Sainte-Foix, 115, 119, 122. 220.
Saint-Evremond, 38, 63, 171, Staël, Mme. de, 14, 28, 71,
212.
116, 117, 138, 155, 173, 185,
Saint-Lambert, 124.
193, 198, 206, 219.
Saint-Prosper, 9, 133, 169. Stendhal, 182, 229.
Saint-Réal, 9, 72, 78, 97, 232. Suard, 36, 126.
Saint-Surin, Mme. de, 33, 120. Swetchine, Mme., 18, 31, 46,
Salm, Mme. de, 51, III, 113, 94, 181.
182, 209.
Sand, George, 14, 17, 33, 34,
T.
39, 45, 47, 54, 62, 80, 82, Taine, 184.
86, 92, 93, 100, 107, 110, Talleyrand, 105, 116, 162, 210.
202, 215, 228, 230, 232, 235, Taylor, Baron, 127.
237, 238.
Thierry, E., 7.
Sarrasin, 160.
Thomas, A. L., 67, 113.
Sartory, Mme. de, 77, 104, Thomas, Saint, 56.
149, 176, 195.
Tour, Mme. de la, 130.
Saurin, 77, 199, 204.
Trublet, 7, 234.
Scudéri, Mlle. de, 30, 54, 74, Turgot, 22.
185, 221.
Second, Albéric, 23.
V.
Ségalas, Mme. Anais, 27. Vair, G. du, 71.
Ségoyer, De, 107.
Valaincourt, 12.
Ségur, 10, 32, 55, 115, 141, Varennes, De, 99, 120, 158,
155, 161, 197, 198.
160, 178.
Sénac de Meilhan, 53, 102, Vauvenargues, 21, 26, 32, 36,
· 140, 144.
42, 55, 58, 69, 77, 83, 88,





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