Even the best intentioned of great men need a few scoundrels around them; there are some things you cannot ask an honest ma to do.

We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.

The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.

There is not in the world so toilsome a trade as the pursuit of fame; life concludes before you have so much as sketched your work.

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.

Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.

There are certain things in which mediocrity is not to be endured, such as poetry, music, painting, public speaking.

Love and friendship exclude each other.

All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.

Liberality consists less in giving a great deal than in gifts well-timed.

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present, which seldom happens to us.

Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

The slave has but one master, the ambitious man has as many as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortunes.

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.

There is no road too long to the man who advances deliberately and without undue haste; there are no honors too distant to the man who prepares himself for them with patience.

Next to sound judgment, diamonds and pearls are the rarest things in the world.

The regeneration of society is the regeneration of society by individual education.

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

The sweetest of all sounds is that of the voice of the woman we love.

If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other.

We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment when alone together.

A position of eminence makes a great person greater and a small person less.

Everything has been said, and we are more than seven thousand years of human thought too late.

The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.

All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.

The great gift of conversation lies less in displaying it ourselves than in drawing it out of others. He who leaves your company pleased with himself and his own cleverness is perfectly well pleased with you.

The Opera is obviously the first draft of a fine spectacle; it suggests the idea of one.

One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.

One mark of a second-rate mind is to be always telling stories.

We should laugh before being happy, for fear of dying without having laughed.

I would not like to see a person who is sober, moderate, chaste and just say that there is no God. They would speak disinterestedly at least, but such a person is not to be found.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.

Logic is the technique by which we add conviction to truth.

A pious man is one who would be an atheist if the king were.

Politeness makes one appear outwardly as they should be within.

The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness.

Man has but three events in his life: to be born, to live, and to die. He is not conscious of his birth, he suffers at his death and he forgets to live.

Men blush less for their crimes than for their weaknesses and vanity.

Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

A man of the world must seem to be what he wishes to be thought.

Out of difficulties grow miracles.

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

This great misfortune - to be incapable of solitude.