A friend loves you for your intelligence, a mistress for your charm, but your family's love is unreasoning; you were born into it and are of its flesh and blood. Nevertheless it can irritate you more than any group of people in the world.

It is better to teach a few things perfectly than many things indifferently...

Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.

A man cannot free himself from the past more easily than he can from his own body.

Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.

To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it.

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.