Religion is the metaphysics of the masses.

Not to go to the theater is like making one's toilet without a mirror.

Sexual passion is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious... and consequently the concentration of all desire

It is, indeed, only in old age that intellectual men attain their sublime expression, whilst portraits of them in their youth show only the first traces of it.

We deceive and flatter no one by such delicate artificies as we do our own selves.

Men are a thousand times more intent on becoming rich than on acquiring culture, though it is quite certain that what a man IS contributes more to his happiness than what he HAS.

Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.