If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one's youth, one's greatest indignation would be for what one has become.

Fear of ridicule begets the worst cowardice.

Chastity more rarely follows fear, or a resolution, or a vow, than it is the mere effect of lack of appetite and, sometimes even, of distaste.

What eludes logic is the most precious element in us, and one can draw nothing from a syllogism that the mind has not put there in advance.

It is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having syphilis and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

The most decisive actions of life are most often unconsidered actions.

Man: The most complex of beings, and thus the most dependent of beings. On all that made you up, you depend.