It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
None are more haughty than a common place person raised to power.
Beauty, unaccompanied by virtue, is as a flower without perfume.
To believe a thing is impossible is to make it so.
The man who has nothing to do is always the busiest.
Don't dance on a volcano.
He who is near the Church is often far from God.
A good swordsman is not given to quarrel.
What makes us discontented with our condition is the absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.
By continually scolding someone, they in time become accustomed to it and despise your reproof.
Set a thief to catch a thief.
Save a thief from the gallows and he will cut your throat.
Those who shine in the second rank, are eclipsed by the first.
One meets his destiny often in the road he takes to avoid it.
He that is born to be hanged shall never be drowned.
Who loves well, chastises well.
Divorce is the sacrament of adultery.
A surgeon should be young a physician old.
One may go a long way after one is tired.
Nothing is more elegant than ready money!
I know by my own pot how the others boil.
Few people rise to our esteem upon closer scrutiny.
Partir, c'est mourir un peu. (To leave is to die a little.)
Fashion is a tyrant from which there is no deliverance; all must conform to its whimsical.
A father is a banker provided by nature.
People always make the wolf more formidable than he is.
A good meal ought to begin with hunger.
Appetite comes with eating; the more one has, the more one would have.
Against change of fortune set a brave heart.
Gambling is the son of avarice and the father of despair.
There are two great pleasures in gambling: that of winning and that of losing.
He that parts with his property before his death prepares himself for much suffering.
Glutton: one who digs his grave with his teeth.
No wind is of service to him that is bound for nowhere.
In the councils of a state, the question is not so much, what ought to be done? As, what can be done?
Without grace beauty is an unabated hook.
Gratitude is the heart's memory.
Nothing resembles an honest man more than a cheat.
He that waits for a dead man's shoes may long go barefoot.
Hope is the dream of a soul awake.
It's good to be clever, but not to show it.
Fear is a great inventor.
Laughing is not always the proof of a mind at ease.
A good lawyer is a bad neighbor.
When a blind man bears the standard, pity those who follow.
Liberty has no crueler enemy than license.
Great talker, great liar.
Life is an onion and one cries while peeling it.
In love, there is always one who kisses and one who offers the cheek.
There are more fools among buyers than among sellers.
Marriage is the sunset of love.
Desperate maladies require desperate remedies.
Speak little and well if you wish to be esteemed a person of merit.
There are no miracles for those that have no faith in them.
Penny wise is often pound foolish.
People will ignore their misfortunes and their interests when they are in competition with their pleasures.
There is something in the misfortune of our best friends which does not displease us.
The French work to live, but the Swiss live to work.
There is nothing new, but what has become antiquated.
More flies are caught with honey than with vinegar.
Never speak of a rope in the family of one who has been hanged.
The while we keep a man waiting, he reflects on our shortcomings.
When we don't have what we like, we must like what we have.
One is rated by others as he rates himself.
A sin confessed is half forgiven.
Skeptics are never deceived.
A closed mouth catches no flies.
He who comes from afar may lie without fear of contradiction as he is sure to be listened to with the utmost attention.
Everyone according to their talent and every talent according to its work.
People count the faults of those who keep them waiting.
Everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls.
Life is half spent before one knows what it is.
Love makes time pass away and time makes love pass away.
Why kill time when one can employ it.
We know the true worth of a thing when we have lost it.
It is a wise man who lives with money in the bank, it is a fool who dies that way.
Work relieves us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and want.
Youth lives on hope, old age on memories.
If youth but had the knowledge and old age the strength.
There are two great pleasures in gambling: that of winning and that of losing