We thank God for having created this world, and praise Him for having made another, quite different one, where the wrongs of this one are corrected.
There is only one science, love, one riches, love, only one policy, love. To make love is all the law and the prophets.
Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.
Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say ‘truth’ and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense.
The best sentence? The shortest.
The law in its majesty prohibits rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges.
We live between two dense clouds; the forgetting of what was and the uncertainty of what will be.
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.
That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
It is only the poor who are forbidden to beg.
Those who have given themselves the most concern about the happiness of peoples have made their neighbors very miserable.
The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.
An old philosopher said to Monsieur Coignard, a Reverend Father: ‘You are a pig!’ To which Abad Coignard answered: ‘You flatter me, sir. But unfortunately, I’m only a man.’
Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.
It’s not by amusing oneself that one learns.
What men call civilization is the condition of present customs; what they call barbarism, the condition of past ones.