Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavour to understand him.

Character is the basis of happiness and happiness the sanction of character.

To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.

Tolerated people are never conciliated. They live on, but the aroma of their life is lost.

I feel so much the continual death of everything and everybody, and have so learned to reconcile myself to it, that the final and official end loses most of its impressiveness.

If artists and poets are unhappy, it is after all because happiness does not interest them.

Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.