I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Common sense is not so common.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and...

To be totally understanding makes one very indulgent.

It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it.

Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices. Politics has once again become religious.

Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.

I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.

Prayer is more than meditation. In meditation, the source of strength is one’s self. When one prays, he goes to a source of strength greater than his own.

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.

The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don’t go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It’s always so.

The media transforms the great silence of things into its opposite. Formerly constituting a secret, the real now talks constantly. News reports, information, statistics, and surveys are everywhere.

We cannot wish for that we know not.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

Better is the enemy of good.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

One must chose in life between boredom and suffering.

Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.

If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.