The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.

I am a physician. I keep a drug-shop of lies. I give relief, consolation. Can one console and relieve without lying? ... Only women and doctors know how necessary and how helpful lies are to men.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

We chase dreams and embrace shadows.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have left me.

All the good writers of confessions, from Augustine onwards, are men who are still a little in love with their sins.

Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say 'truth' and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense.