Motives are causes experienced from within.

It's the niceties that make the difference fate gives us the hand, and we play the cards.

Newspapers are the second hand of history.

(Politeness is) a tacit agreement that people's miserable defects, whether moral or intellectual, shall on either side be ignored and not be made the subject of reproach.

First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.

What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.

Animals learn death first at the moment of death;...man approaches death with the knowledge it is closer every hour, and this creates a feeling of uncertainty over his life, even for him who forgets in the business of life that annihilation is awaiting him. It is for this reason chiefly that we have philosophy and religion.