A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines of the first City.....Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.

For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.

A tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.

Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin of it.

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

That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.