"An Antechamber of the Académie Française", chapter of The Women of the French Salons by Amelia Gere Mason ."

“We live with as we do with the perfumes that we wear, we do not smell them ; they only incommode others. .”

“A Persian ambassador asked the wife of Leonidas, why they paid such honors to the women at Lacedemon? "It is," replied she, "because they have entirely the forming of the men." .”

“Shame is a secret pride; and pride is an error with regard to one's own worth, and an injustice with regard to what one has a mind to appear to others. .”

“We spoil the dispositions nature has given to women ; we neglect their education, fill their minds with nothing solid, and destine them solely to please, and to please only by their graces or their vices.”

“A man that does not aim at raising to himself a great name, will never perform any great actions. And such as go carelessly on in the road of their professions suffer all the fatigues, without acquiring either the honour or recompense that naturally attend it. .”

“The owning of faults is no hard matter for persons that find a fund within themselves to mend them. .”