I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

In nine lifetimes, you'll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

It is an absolute and virtually divine perfection to know how to enjoy our being rightfully.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

An unattempted lady could not vaunt of her chastity.

One may be humble out of pride.