We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured..

It is the contest that delights us, and not the victory..

There are plenty of maxims in the world; all that remains is to apply them..

The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog..

A jester, a bad character..

I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does..

L'homme n'est ni ange ni be" te, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la be" te. Man is neither angel nor beast.Unfortunately, he who ….

If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to ceas….

There are vices which have no hold upon us, but in connection with others; and which, when you cut down the trunk, fall like the branches..

Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical..

Things are always at their best in their beginning..

Necessity, that great refuge and excuse for human frailty, breaks through all law; and he is not to be accounted in fault whose crime is not the effe….

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is cr….

Generally we are occupied either with the miseries which now we feel, or with those which threaten; and even when we see ourselves sufficiently secur….

All sorrow has its root in man's inability to sit quiet in a room by himself..

We think very little of time present; we anticipate the future, as being too slow, and with a view to hasten it onward, we recall the past to stay it….

Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same..

Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength..

Lust is the source of all our actions, and humanity..

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better..

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end..