What a heartbreaking job it is trying to combine authors for their own protection... the first lesson I learned was that when you take the field for the authors you will be safer without a breastplate than without a backplate.

Greatness is one of the sensations of littleness

A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.

When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.

People exaggerate the value of things they haven't got everybody worships truth and unselfishness because they have no experience with them

The way to deal with worldly people is to frighten them by repeating their scandalous whisperings aloud.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.