To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism — this is the art of living.

Help thyself and Heaven will help thee.

Patience and the passage of time do more than strength and fury.

I bend and do not break.

Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.

It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Everyone has his faults which he continually repeats: neither fear nor shame can cure them.

Rien ne sert de courir il faut partir à point

It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.

In short, luck’s always to blame.

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it: nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.

By the work one knows the workmen.

Everyone believes very easily whatever he fears or desires.

There is nothing useless to men of sense.

Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret.

Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which increases with the setting sun of life

There is no road of flowers leading to glory.

Be aware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.

Sadness flies away on the wings of time.

A hungry stomach cannot hear.

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Dressed in the lion’s skin, the ass spread terror far and wide.

It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

The strongest passion is fear.

Better a living beggar than a buried emperor.