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

The best sentence? The shortest..

Suffering... 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 owe to it all the virtues..

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

That child whose mother has never smiled upon him is worthy neither of the table of the gods nor the couch of the goddesses..

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom..

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

Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest..

What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to m….

A woman without breasts is like a bed without pillows..

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me..

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

I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love..

Silence is the wit of fools..

Men are not created to know, men are not created to understand ... and our illusions increase with our knowledge..

It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that h….

What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones..

The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads..

Nine tenths of education is encouragement..

Intelligent women always marry fools.

The future is a convenient place for dreams..