We are so presumptuous that we should like to be known all over the world, even by people who will only come when we are no more. Such is our vanity that the good opinion of half a dozen of the people around us gives us pleasure and satisfaction.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

Nothing is surer than that the people will be weak.

Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.

Civil wars are the greatest of evils. They are inevitable, if we wish to reward merit, for all will say that they are meritorious.

We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.