Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

That prudery which survives youth and beauty resembles a scarecrow left in the fields after harvest.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

It is not what we have but what we enjoy that constitutes our abundance.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

The politics of courtiers resemble their shadows; they cringe and turn with the sun of the day.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

It is almost impossible to find those who admire us entirely lacking in taste.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

A pedant holds more to instruct us with what he knows, than of what we are ignorant.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

When our friends are alive, we see the good qualities they lack; dead, we remember only those they possessed.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Perfect servants would be the worst of all for certain masters, whose happiness consists in finding fault with them.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Every generous illusion of youth leaves a wrinkle as it departs. Experience is the successive disenchanting of the things of life; it…

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

We are told to walk noiselessly through the world, that we may waken neither hatred, nor envy; but, alas! what can we…

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

We forget the origin of a parvenu if he remembers it; we remember it if he forgets it.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Many fortunes, like rivers, have a pure source, but grow muddy as they grow large.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Public opinion is a courtesan, whom we seek to please without respecting.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

There is a proverb in the South that a woman laughs when she can, and weeps when she pleases.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

How many wells of science there are in whose depths there is nothing but clear water!

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

There is certainly no beauty on earth which exceeds the natural loveliness of woman.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Loud indignation against vice often stands for virtue in the eyes of bigots.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Those virtues which cost us dear prove that we love God; those which are easy to us prove that He loves us.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

There are some errors so sweet that we repent them only to bring them to memory.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Religion is the hospital of the souls that the world has wounded.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

There are wounds of self-love which one does not confess to one's dearest friends.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn