Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.
We eagerly get hold of a law that serves as a weapon to our passions.
Art is long, life is short; judgement difficult, opportunity transient.
Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through.
To live as one likes is plebian the noble man aspires to order and law.
Such is the frailty of man that even where he makes the truest and most forcible impression in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish.
A great revolution is never the fault of the people, but of the government.
The world is so full of simpletons and madmen, that one need not seek them in a madhouse.
Stupidity is without anxiety.
Women are silver dishes into which we put golden apples.
Confronted by outstanding merit, there is no way of saving one’s ego except by love.
Don’t say that you want to give, but go ahead and give! You’ll never catch up with a mere hope.
The most original of authors are not so because they advance what is new, but more because they know how to say something, as if it had never been said before.
Who is sure of their own motives can in confidence advance or retreat.
The greatest genius will not be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources.
The soul is indestructible and its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.
Where a man has a passion for meditating without the capacity of thinking, a particular idea fixes itself fast, and soon creates a mental disease.
If a man knows where to get good advice, it is as though he could supply it himself.
A reasonable man needs only to practice moderation to find happiness.
It is not enough to have knowledge; one must apply it. It is not enough to have wishes; one must also accomplish them.