C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Madame Necker
A certain amount of distrust is wholesome, but not so much of others as of ourselves; neither vanity nor conceit can exist in the same atmosphere with it.
A pure style in writing results from the rejection of everything superfluous.
A woman must be truly refined to incite chivalry in the heart of a man.
As the blush is the signal of innocence, so is serenity of manner the token of a quiet conscience.
Behavior is the theory of manners practically applied.
Blushes are the rainbow of modesty.
Custom is the tyranny of the lower human faculties over the higher.
Diffidence is not always innocence.
Dignity and love do not blend.
Elegance is exquisite polish.
Every one speaks of it,—who has known it?
Fiction is a potent agent for good—in the hands of the good.
For the honest people, relations increase with the years. For the vicious, inconveniences increase. Inconstancy is the defect of vice; the influence of habit is one of the qualities of virtue.
Gallantry thrives most in the atmosphere of the court.
How immense appear to us the sins that we have not committed!
In looking around me seeking for miserable resources against the heaviness of time, I open a book, and I say to myself, as the cat to the fox: I have only one good turn, but I need no other.
Indulgence, twin sister of guilt.
Innocence and mystery never dwell long together.
It is never permissible to say, I say.
It is often a sign of wit not to show it, and not to see that others want it.
It were no virtue to bear calamities if we did not feel them.
Love is the only possession which we can carry with us beyond the grave.
Love is the pass-key to the heart.
Make your best thoughts into action.
Obligation is the bitterest thraldom.
Obstinacy is ever most positive when it is most in the wrong.
One can impose silence on sentiment, but one cannot give it limits.
One of the first observations to make in conversation is the state, or the character, and the education of the person to whom we speak.
Order in a house ought to be like the machinery in opera, whose effect produces great pleasure, but whose ends must be hid.
Our own cast-off sorrows are not sufficient to constitute sympathy for others.
Reason ought not, like vanity, to adorn herself with ancient parchments, and the display of a genealogical tree; more dignified in her proceedings, and proud of her immortal nature, she ought to derive everything from herself.
Recognized probity is the surest of all oaths.
Remarkable places are like the summits of rocks; eagles and reptiles only can get there.
Romance is the poetry of literature.
That woman is happiest whose life is passed in the shadow of a manly, loving heart.
The heart of a good man is the sanctuary of God in this world.
The inconvenience or the beauty of the blush, which is the greater?
The more heart, the more sorrow.
The most subtle flattery that a woman can receive is by actions, not by words.
The quarrels of lovers are like summer storms; everything is more beautiful when they have passed.
The weakness of women has been given them to call forth the virtues of men.
Want of perseverance is the great fault of women in everything—morals, attention to health, friendship, and so on. It cannot be too often repeated that women never reach the end of anything through want of perseverance.
When death gives us a long lease of life, it takes as hostages all those whom we have loved.
Woman’s tongue is her weapon, her sword, which she never permits to rest or rust.
Women do not often have it in their power to give like men, but they forgive like Heaven.
Worship your heroes from afar; contact withers them.
You may be more prodigal of time than of money.