Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women’s clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
In every well-governed state wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.
The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
What we call strategy is mainly just crossing rivers on bridges and passing mountains though cols.
Never lend books, for no one ever returns them.
A simple style is like white light. Although complex, it does not appear to be so.
To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
Unhappiness does make people look stupid.
Custom alone regulates morals.
The duty of literature is to note what counts, and to light up what is suited to the light. If it ceases to choose and to love, it becomes like a woman who gives herself without preference.
Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream.
In order that knowledge be properly digested it must have been swallowed with a good appetite.
I do not know any reading more easy, more fascinating, more delightful than a catalogue.
It is not customary to love what one has.
What we call happiness is what we do not know.
You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.