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

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.

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult.

Vegetation is the basic instrument the creator uses to set all of nature in motion.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.

Thus first of all in His own person He sanctified, restored, and blessed human nature.

Consistency is found in that work whose whole and detail are suitable to the occasion. It arises from circumstance, custom, and nature.

It was he who impressed, time and again, the necessity of singing as nature intended, and - I remember - he constantly warned, don't let the public know that you work. So I went slowly. I never forced the voice.

Our purpose is simply to ask how theological principles can be shown to have usable secular analogues that throw light upon the nature of language.

What motivates me in art is the ugly and beautiful nature of the truth. It has to be truthful and honest, even if it is ugly and grotesque.

I was 48-years old before anybody talked me into it for medicinal purposes, instead of some of these drugs that they give you that will lead you to heart surgery and things of that nature.

Shuffling is the only thing which Nature cannot undo.

We are all several different people. There are different aspects of our nature that are competing.

Because the quality of living with nature and allowing it to manifest itself is different than the quality of living in a city, especially a dense city.

Nature's laws must be obeyed, and the period of decline begins, and goes on with accelerated rapidity.