Nowhere but in France are people so strictly observant of great matters and so disdainfully indulgent about small ones.
Love is the poetry of the senses.
People exaggerate both happiness and unhappiness; we are never so fortunate nor so unfortunate as people say we are.
The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.
The questioning spirit is the rebellious spirit. A rebellion is always either a cloak to hide a prince, or the swaddling wrapper of a new rule.
Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?
Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.
The innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.
What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.
Society is no more indulgent than was the God of Genesis.
Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves.
Virtually all men of action incline to Fatality just as most thinkers incline to Providence.
The key to all sciences is unquestionably the question mark. To the word How? we owe most of our greatest discoveries. Wisdom in life may perhaps consist in asking ourselves on all occasions: Why?
Man’s condition is horrible because, no matter what form his happiness may take, it arises from some species of ignorance.
Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God’s very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.
The great secret of social alchemy is to profit best from each stage in our lives, to gather all its leaves in spring, all its flowers in summer, and all its fruits in autumn.
Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.
Our energies are often stimulated by the necessity of supporting a being weaker than ourselves.
Modern reformers offer nebulous theories or write philanthropic novels. But your thief acts! He is as clear as a fact and as logical as a punch on the nose! And what a style he has!
To get a traveling salesman drunk is the height of impossibility.
Self-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such are the theologic virtues of marriage.