Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.
To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic.
It is a great bond to dislike the same things.
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
Existence is a miracle, and, morally considered, a free gift from moment to moment.
In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality....The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral.