I have no enthusiasm for nature which the slightest chill will not instantly destroy.

God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.

The brain is a tool that gets rusty without constant, albeit moderate, exercise.

Age continually alters the faces of those who think or study, and so their portraits differ from one another and don't even resemble them for very long. I dream so much and live so little that I'm sometimes only three years old. But the next day I'm three hundred, if the dream has been sombre.

There are no more thorough prudes than those who have some little secret to hide.

If people were not wicked I should not mind their being stupid; but, to our misfortune, they are both.

To eat together is one of the greatest promoters of intimacy. It is the satisfaction in common of a material necessity of existence, and if you seek a loftier meaning in it, it is a communion.