Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.

[T]he appropriate form of address between man and man ought to be, not monsieur, sir, but fellow sufferer, compagnon de miseres.

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

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

There is only one inborn error. and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy.

It is a curious fact that in bad days we can very vividly recall the good time that is now no more; but that in good days, we have only a very cold and imperfect memory of the bad.

Every genius is a great child; he gazes out at the world as something strange, a spectacle, and therefore with purely objective interest