Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
Be my brother or I will kill you.
There aren’t many benefactors who don’t say, like Satan: All these things will I give you if you bow down and worship me.
Someone described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence.
The contact of two epidermises.
Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.
Where violence reigns, reason is weak.
Conviction is the conscience of intellect.
Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.
In a country where everyone strives for attention, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing.
The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine.
Chance is a nickname for Providence.
Were a man to consult only his reason, who would marry? For myself, I wouldn’t marry, for fear of having a son who resembled me.
An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.
Satire is the disease of art.
Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.
The poor are the blacks of Europe.
Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.
The sunset glow of self-possession.