Dining out is a vice, a dissipation of spirit punished by remorse. We eat, drink, and talk a little too much, abuse all our friends, belch out our literary preferences and are egged on by accomplices in the audience to acts of mental exhibitionism. Such evenings cannot fail to diminish those who take part in them. They end on Monkey Hill.

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.

Doing is overrated, and success undesirable, but the bitterness of failure even more so.

We fear something before we hate.

If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last.

The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals

Most of the beauty of women evaporates when they achieve domestic happiness at the price of their independence.