The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
My trade and art is to live.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Marriage is like a cage one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
The thing I fear most is fear.
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.