Conversation
To my taste the most fruitful and most natural exercise of our minds is conversation. […] Studying books has a languid feeble motion, whereas conversation...
Recent Thoughts
Talk about yourself
…you never talk about yourself without loss: condemn yourself and you are always believed: praise yourself and you never are.
Where faults are crimes
In places where faults are crimes, crimes are only faults.
Old age
An ugly old age when openly avowed is in my opinion less old and less ugly than one smoothed out and painted over.
Marriage
I know no marriages which fail and come to grief more quickly than those which are set on foot by beauty and amorous desire. Marriage requires foundations...