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

Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.

The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

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

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

One must not hope to be more than one can be.

It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.

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

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.

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

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

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

When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.

Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.

Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.

Conviction is the conscience of the mind.

Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.

Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.

The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed.

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!

Sure, I get the blues. But what I try to do, is apply joy to the blues, you know? I don't know if it's a technique, or just being bent that way, being raised by the folks I was raised by.