Plays, gentlemen, are to their authors what children are to women: they cost more pain than they give pleasure.
Where love is concerned, too much is not even enough.
If a thing isn’t worth saying, you sing it.
To make a living, craftiness is better than learnedness.
Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise.
To obtain a woman who loves you, you must treat her as if she didn’t.
Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick.
I make myself laugh at everything, so that I do not weep.
It is by no means necessary to understand things to speak confidently about them.
Honest men love women; those who deceive them adore them.
The same wind that extinguishes a light can set a brazier on fire.
Calumniate, calumniate; there will always be something which sticks.
Be commonplace and creeping and you’ll be a success.
I would rather worry without need than live without heed.
I grant men the land, the government, the wealth, all the chances. I accept that you have to hold all the cards, since that’s the only way you know how to play; but I refuse to swallow your disrespect.
A writer’s inspiration is not just to create. He must eat three times a day.
Without pleasure man would live like a fool and soon die.
Can love and peace live in the same heart? Youth is unhappy because it is faced with this terrible choice; love without peace, or peace without love.
FIGARO. The way I see it, sir, a man can only choose between being stupid or mad.
COUNT. The fact is, when you start losing your temper, even the most tightly controlled imagination will run wild, just as it does in dreams.