To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

the brut first knows death when it dies, but man draws consciously nearer to it every hour that he lives; and this makes his life at times a questionable good even to him who has not recognised this character of constant anaihilation in the whole of life.

You must treat a work of art like a great man: stand before it and wait patiently till it deigns to speak.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

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.

A writer should never be brief at the expense of being clear.

What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has or how he is regarded by others.