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| A man must be healthy before he can be holy. | 1 |
| Error, sterile in itself, produces only by means of the portion of truth which it contains. | 2 |
| In a healthy state of the organism all wounds have a tendency to heal. | 3 |
| In the world’s opinion marriage, as in a play, winds up everything; whereas it is, in fact, the beginning of everything. | 4 |
| La jeunesse devrait être une caisse d’épargne—Youth ought to be a savings’ bank. | 5 |
| Liberty has no actual rights which are not grafted upon justice. | 6 |
| Liberty must be a mighty thing, for by it God punishes and rewards nations. | 7 |
| One must be somebody in order to have an enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force. | 8 |
| Our vanity is the constant enemy of our dignity. | 9 |
| Real sorrow is almost as difficult to discover as real poverty. An instinctive delicacy hides the rays of the one and the wounds of the other. | 10 |
| Repentance is accepted remorse. | 11 |
| Resignation is putting God between one’s self and one’s grief. | 12 |
| Strength alone knows conflict; weakness is below even defeat, and is born vanquished. | 13 |
| Strength needs support far more than weakness. A feather sustains itself long in the air. | 14 |
| The best of lessons, for a good many people, would be to listen at a keyhole. It is a pity for such that the practice is dishonourable. | 15 |
| The ideal of friendship is to feel as one while remaining two. | 16 |
| The root of sanctity is sanity. A man must be healthy before he can be holy. We bathe first, and then perfume. | 17 |
| There are two ways of attaining an important end—force and perseverance; the silent power of the latter grows irresistible with time. | 18 |
| There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all. | 19 |
| To have ideas is to gather flowers; to think is to weave them into garlands. | 20 |
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| Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones. | 21 |
| We are always looking into the future, but we see only the past. | 22 |
| We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians. | 23 |
| We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us. | 24 |
| We expect everything, and are prepared for nothing. | 25 |
| We must labour unceasingly to render our piety reasonable, and our reason pious. | 26 |
| We reform others unconsciously when we walk uprightly. | 27 |
| When fresh sorrows have caused us to take some steps in the right way, we may not complain. We have invested in a life annuity, but the income remains. | 28 |
| “Who will guard the guards?” says a Latin verse,—“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” I answer, “The enemy.” It is the enemy who keeps the sentinel watchful. | 29 |
| Years do not make sages; they only make old men. | 30 |
| Youth should be a savings-bank. | 31 |
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