To be content with life or to live merrily, rather all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

As soon as you know a man to be blind, you imagine that you can see it from his back.

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

If an angel were to tell us about his philosophy, I believe many of his statements might well sound like '2 x 2= 13'.

Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.

There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.