A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher. But a daughter is a different matter.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious

I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.

It's even pleasant to be sick when you know that there are people who await your recovery as they might await a holiday.

[In] death at least there would be one profit; it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others; and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.