Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.

The flower is a jumble of thighs, the sun’s harem – the most oriental thing imaginable.

Conviction is the conscience of the mind.

The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

The greatest happiness is to transform one’s feelings into action.

There is a melancholy that stems from greatness.

I don’t think there’s a problem at all with steroids in the NHL. I can say that.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Weakness on both sides is, as we know, the motto of all quarrels.

Love has features which pierce all hearts, he wears a bandage which conceals the faults of those beloved. He has wings, he comes quickly and flies away the same.

I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.

To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

Women eat while they are talking; men talk while they are eating.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

One is not born a woman, but becomes one.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

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

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

The human mind always makes progress, but it is a progress in spirals.

The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it’s the transparency that counts.

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

Let us read and let us dance – two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

The flowery style is not unsuitable to public speeches or addresses, which amount only to compliment. The lighter beauties are in their place when there is nothing more solid to say; but the flowery style...

We always keep God waiting while we admit more importunate suitors.

Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don’t know, and who don’t know us.