JOHN PETIT-SENN

Where talent is a dwarf, self-esteem is a giant.

We tire of those pleasures we take, but never of those we give.

Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half the evil they say of others.

True courage is like a kite; a contrary wind raises it higher.

An angry woman is vindictive beyond measure, and hesitates at nothing in her bitterness.

Pleasure limps for him. who enjoys it alone.

In love we are not only liable to betray ourselves, but also the secrets of others.

No woman dares express all she thinks.

Women always find their bitterest foes among their own sex.

What we gain by experience is not worth that we lose in illusion

That experience which does not make us better makes us worse.

The wonderful fortune of some writers deludes and leads to misery a great number of young people.

In a better world we will find our young years and our old friends.

The grave is a crucible where memory is purified; we only remember a dead friend by those qualities which make him regretted.

In all that surrounds him the egotist sees only the frame of his own portrait.

Envy, like flame, blackens that which is above it, and which it cannot reach.

The virtuous woman flees from danger; she trusts more to her prudence in shunning it than in her strength to overcome it.

To protect ourselves against the storms of passion, marriage with a woman is a harbor in the tempest; but with a bad woman it is a tempest in the harbor.

Age whitens hairs, but not sin.

The great chastisement of a knave is not to be known, but to know himself.

The most exacting jailer is our own conscience.

Genius, like a torch, shines less in the broad daylight of the present than in the night of the past.

The hatred we bear our enemies injures their happiness less than our own.

Conscience serves us especially to judge of the actions of others.

It is easy to be virtuous in prospective.