A woman must decide between a man who women like, and then have no security, or a man who women don ‘ t like, and have no happiness.

Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He does not want to sign His name.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.

What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women’s clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

It is almost systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no...

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.

Without the utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked;…utopia is the principle of all progress, adn the essay into a better world.

He despises men with tenderness

History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.

Ignorance is the necessary condition, i do not say of happiness, but of life itself. If we knew everything, we could not endure existence a single hour. The sentiments that make it sweet to us,...

Justice is the means by which established injustices are sanctioned

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan, but also believe!

America, where thanks to Congress, there are forty million laws to enforce the Ten Commandments

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

The greatest virtue of man is perhaps curiosity.

Of all sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.

The impotence of God is infinite

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.

Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

We reproach people for talking about themselves but it is the subject they treat best

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice

It was one of the liest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem -and in...

It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.

The future is a convenient place for dreams

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.

J’ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l’indifférence.

I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

We live too much in books and not enough in nature, and we are very much like the simpleton of a Pliny the Younger, who went on studying a Greek author while before his eyes...

Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.

I sought out the laws which govern nature, solid or ethereal, and after much pondering I perceived that the Universe had not been formed as its pretended Creator would have us believe; I knew that...

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

Silence is the wit of fools.

For the majority of people, though they do not know what to do with this life, long for another that shall have no end.

I would define a book as a work of magic whence escape, all kinds of images to trouble the souls and change the hearts of men

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

The wonder is, not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it