"After all," he says, "it ought not to offend one's sense.
To an honest nose that has preserved its natural innocence, 'tis not a goat, but a bemusked and ambre-scented woman, who smelleth ill." "When I compare our friendships to our antipathies, I find that the first are thin, small, pinched; we know how to hate, but we do not know how to love." "A poet who becomes idle, does excellently well to be idle; he ought to be sure that it is not industry that fails, but that his gift is departing from him." "Comfort the miserable; that is the true way to console yourself for my absence.

I recollect saying to the Baron, when he lost his first wife, and was sure that there was not another day's happiness left for him in this world, 'Hasten out of doors, seek out the wretched, console them, and then you will pity yourself, if you dare.'"[209] "An infinitude of tyrannical things interpose between us and the duties of love and friendship; and we do nothing aright.

A man is neither free for his ambition, nor free for his taste, nor free for his passion.

And so we all live discontented with ourselves.

One of the great inconveniences of the state of society is the multitude of our occupations and, above all, the levity with which we make engagements to dispose of all our future happiness.