Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If people were not wicked I should not mind their being stupid; but, to our misfortune, they are both.
A child motivated by competitive ideals will grow into a man without conscience, shame, or true dignity.
Be prudent, and if you hear, * * * some insult or some threat, * * * have the appearance of not hearing it.
You don't have to write to me if you don't feel like it. There's no real friendship without absolute freedom.
Simplicity, a delicate silence about oneself, increases their worth and makes one love those whom one admires.
Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.
Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself
Talent, will and genius are natural phenomena like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the wind, the star, the cloud.
Some say that cats are devils, but they behave badly only when they are alone. When they are among us cats are angels.
The most honest of men is the one who thinks and acts best, but the most powerful is the one who writes and speaks best.
Fame and admiration weigh not a feather in the scale against friendship and love, for the heart languishes all the same.
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
Writing a journal means that facing your ocean you are afraid to swim across it, so you attempt to drink it drop by drop.
[Failure is hard initially because] One knows what one has lost, but not what one may find [and learn from that failure]!
I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.
Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.
And I refused to make any sacrifices; for nothing on earth seemed more valuable than my peace of mind, my pleasure and my acclaim.
Life is a slate where all our sins are written; from time to time we rub the sponge of repentance over it so we can begin sinning again.
No human being can control love, and no one is to blame either for feeling it or for losing it. What alone degrades a woman is falsehood.
One wastes so much time, one is so prodigal of life, at twenty! Our days of winter count for double. That is the compensation of the old.
To be made evident, truth must be sought for; for of itself it is slow to appear, and between ourselves and God the obstacles are so many!
... the progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make the best of it.
Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
My strength has not equaled my mad ambition. I have remained obscure; I have done worse -- I have touched success, and allowed it to escape me.
The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling.
It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.
Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
Humanity is outraged in me and with me. We must not dissimulate nor try to forget this indignation, which is one of the most passionate forms of love.
Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.
The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.
You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.
Nowadays it seems that moral education is no longer considered necessary. Attention is wholly centered on intelligence, while the heart life is ignored.
God has written in the law of nature that when two people are joined in love or friendship, one must always give his heart more perfectly than the other.
I see upon their noble brows the seal of the Lord, for they were born kings of the earth far more truly than those who possess it only from having bought it.
Ah! that Senate is a world of ice and darkness! It votes the destruction of peoples as the simplest and wisest thing; for its members themselves are moribund.
One never knows how much a family may grow; and when a hive is too full, and it is necessary to form a new swarm, each one thinks of carrying away his own honey.
... when we are misunderstood it is always our own fault. What the reader wants most of all is to be able to grasp what we think; but you loftily refuse to comply.
Death must no longer be either the penalty for prosperity or the consolation of misery. God did not destine it to be either the punishment or the compensation for life.
A man is not a wall, whose stones are crushed upon the road; or a pipe, whose fragments are thrown away at a street corner. The fragments of an intellect are always good.
No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.
Punctuation has its own philosophy, just as style does, although not as language does. Style is a good understanding of language, punctuation is a good understanding of style.
There is only one sex. A man and a woman are so entirely the same thing that one can scarcely understand the subtle reasons for sex distinctions with which our minds are filled.
Time is always wanting to me, and I cannot meet with a single day when I am nut hurried along, driven to by wits'-end by urgent work, business to attent do or some service to render.
I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing - the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.
Anything we destroy in ourselves we destroy in others. Our falls lower others and throw them down; we owe it to our fellows to keep upright, in order that they too may keep their feet.
Heavens! whatever possesses us, here below, that we mutually torment ourselves, sourly reproach our mutual faults, and mercilessly condemn all that is not cut according to our pattern?
To eat together is one of the greatest promoters of intimacy. It is the satisfaction in common of a material necessity of existence, and if you seek a loftier meaning in it, it is a communion.
Ever since time began the world has seemed stupid to those who aren't stupid themselves. It was to avoid that annoyance that I became stupid myself, as fast as ever I could. Sheer egoism, no doubt.
Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless - one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her.