A happy life is impos­si­ble; the best that a man can attain is a heroic life.

If a man sets out to hate all the miserable creatures he meets, he will not have much energy left for anything else; whereas he can despise them, one and all, with the greatest ease.

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print.

Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred.

Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.

A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.

Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible