Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one's fatherland, which is perishable?

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

Give, but, if possible, spare the poor man the shame of begging.

I am wholly yours - you are everything to me; we will sustain each other in all the ills of life it may please fate to inflict upon us; you will soothe my troubles; I will comfort you in yours.

The first promise exchanged by two beings of flesh was at the foot of a rock that was crumbling into dust; they took as witness for their constancy a sky that is not the same for a single instant; everything changed in them and around them, and they believed their hearts free of vicissitudes. O children! always children!