Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

Very learned women are to be found, in the same manner as female warriors; but they are seldom or ever inventors.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

Governments need to have both shepherds and butchers.

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

A witty saying proves nothing.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.

History should be written as philosophy.

Clever tyrants are never punished.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

Common sense is not so common.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

To the wicked, everything serves as pretext.

The multitude of books is making us ignorant.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity.

Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Injustice in the end produces independence.