We criticize a thinker more acutely when he advances a proposition that is disagreeable to us; and yet it would be more reasonableto do so when his proposition is agreeable to us.

Women's modesty generally increases with their beauty.

Man is more sensitive to the contempt that others feel towards him than to the contempt that he feels towards himself.

Love is more afraid of change than destruction.

A degree of culture, and assuredly a very high one, is attained when man rises above superstitions and religious notions and fears, and, for instance, no longer believes in guardian angels or in original sin, and has also ceased to talk of the salvation of his soul.

The same relation exists between merchant and pirate, who for a long period are one and the same person: where the one function appears to them inadvisable, they exercise the other.

Ultimately, no one can extract from things, books included, more than he already knows.