You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.
Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.
Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.
I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste.
Reading nurtures the soul, and an enlightened friend brings it solace.
It is the first law of friendship that it has to be cultivated. The second is to be indulgent when the first law is neglected.
God created woman to tame man.
It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.
Only your friends steal your books.
To achieve a goal, a dream, a wish, you must plan it out for success!
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people.
We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.
This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Historians are gossips who tease the dead.
I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species.