Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.
Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.
Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing but that we cannot prevent from barking.
We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in peasant garments as well?
Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.
Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.
In a country where everyone strives for attention, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing.
Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.
The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
We must start human society from scratch; as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.
The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests-a gold mine.
A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like hack-horses setting out to gallop.
Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.
If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.
Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.
Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a chateau does to its owner.
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but craving honor, and feeding on selfishness.
Vivre est un maladie dont le sommeil nous soulage toutes les 16 heures. C'est un pallatif. La mort est le remede.
In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.
A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.
Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.
Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
Though we best know and cannot deny our imperfections, it is not for us to lose our self-reliance and true manhood.
What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself.
The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.
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.
Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. We do not go to market with ingots, but with silver and small change.
There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.
Obscurity and Innocence, twin sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armor, in contact with the world.
The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.
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.
Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.
[Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.
It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.
At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.
Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
The majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.
Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.
If taking vitamins doesn't keep you healthy enough, try more laughter: The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.