Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don’t know, and who don’t know us.
We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins...
Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he’s always ready to escape their control.
Public opinion reigns in society because stupidity reigns among the stupid.
There are more fools than wise men, and even in a wise man there is more folly than wisdom.
Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a chateau does to its owner.
Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
One must not hope to be more than one can be.
If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.
The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.
Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.