“Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence.” — Samuel Butler

Maxims of the French woman of letters Diane de Beausacq (1829-1899):

• To say of a man: he never grows angry when he is scolded, never scolds when he is angry, is to give him a good character.
• There are two ways of diminishing the tedium of a tedious task — to do it with all your might, or in the company of one you love.
• Those who die a lingering death are never so bitterly lamented; they have been mourned in advance.
• Honor exists but for the honorable.
• There are people who spend their lives in searching in the conduct of others for some cause for anger.
• Light folk take light things seriously and serious things lightly.
• Trust not your mistrust; you will be more often deceived by it than by mankind.
• Doubt poisons everything but destroys nothing.
• To the noble, ability is a merit — to the mean, a defect.
• Of the lives of others, we see only the pretexts.
• Of two duties, it would seem that the more irksome is ever the more imperious.
• If God knows all, I do not fear him.
• To spoil children is to deceive them concerning life; life herself does not spoil us.
• To be loved and yet unhappy savors of ingratitude.
• Men resemble one another most in the heart and differ most in character; we can speak of the human heart, but not of the human character.
• We are inclined to imagine that, in making a sacrifice, we are bound to do good. Self-denial, like selfishness, has its moments of blindness.
• Following a long and difficult path, we penetrate to the root of things; then, when we utter the truth we have arrived at, we are astonished to find that we are not always understood: it is the recollection of the path that leads to it that renders a truth obvious.
• The less a man thinks of himself, the less unhappy will he be.

“Strong reasons determine our resolves, slight reasons arrest us, on the eve of executing them. Most of us have looked forward eagerly to going a journey, and yet, when the hour of departure has come, many a one has been stopped by the fear of the bad cooking and comfortless beds of the inn.”

English proverbs:

Experience keeps a dear school. (1743)
Everybody stretches his legs according to the length of his coverlet. (1550)
He that would the daughter win, must with the mother first begin. (1578)
A still tongue makes a wise head. (1562)
Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them. (1640)
One of these days is none of these days. (1658)
One hand for yourself and one for the ship. (1799)
It’s never too late to mend. (1590)
The highest branch is not the safest roost. (1563)
He who is absent is always in the wrong. (1640)
The golden age was never the present age. (1732)
Example is better than precept. (1400)
Sweep your own doorstep clean. (1624)
Idle people have the least leisure. (1678)
He that would have eggs must endure the cackling of hens. (1659)

“To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.” — J. Robert Oppenheimer, Letters and Recollections, 1980

“It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.” — Samuel Johnson

“Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.” — Montaigne

“Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.” — William Gladstone

“The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.” — Thomas Macaulay