Where the past is venerated the clean and those who clean things up should be kept out. Piety is never happy without a little dust, dirt, and rubbish.

A friend whose hopes we cannot satisfy is a friend we would rather have as an enemy.

Life is an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power.

We deceive ourselves when giving respect to the person for whom we have surrendered ourselves, when we respectively expect them to be as we would wish them to be.

To find everything profound - that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.

Life is hard to bear: but do not affect to be so delicate! We are all of us fine sumpter asses and assesses.

When a man has just been greatly honored and has eaten a little he is the most generous.