What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance?

We have drugs to make women speak, but none to keep them silent

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.

We have never heard the devil’s side of the story, God wrote all the book.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil.

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.

It is better to understand little than to misunderstand a lot.

It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

Je tiens à mon imperfection comme à ma raison d’être.

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

It is well for the heart to be naive and for the mind not to be

Epicure a dit: ou Dieu veut empêcher le mal et ne le peut, ou il le peut et ne le veut, ou il ne le peut ni ne le veut, ou il le veut et...

The whole art of teaching is the only art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards; and curiosity itself can be vivid and wholesome only in proportion...

The finest words in the world are only vain sounds, if you cannot comprehend them

Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.

Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we...

If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to...

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.