The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
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There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
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There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
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Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
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He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
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We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.
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Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.
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Bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even s...
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What then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange misture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to you a family whose grandfather was an englishman, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a french woman, and whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American.
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I was not long since in a company where I was not who of my fraternity brought news of a kind of pills, by true account, composed of a hundred and odd several ingredients; whereat we laughed very heartily, and made ourselves good sport; for what rock so hard were able to resist the shock or withstand the force of so thick and numerous a battery?
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If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.
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There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.
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Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.
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In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection, otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.
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The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
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The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some people have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it...
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No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.
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It is a custom of our justice to condemn some as a warning to others.
To condemn them because they have done wrong would be stupidity, as Plato says. For what is done cannot be undone. But they are condemned that they may not go wrong again in the same way, or that others may avoid following their example.
We do not correct the man we hang; we correct others through him. I do the same....
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It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
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We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of contrary things, also of different tones...
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The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
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Confidence in others' honesty is no light testimony of one's own integrity.
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Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
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Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
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He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
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If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.
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Few men have been admired of their familiars.
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The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.
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The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them; he has lived for a long time who has little lived.
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My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him order the architec...
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