There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.

Emotion is primarily about nothing and much of it remains about nothing to the end.

The human mind is not rich enough to drive many horses abreast and wants one general scheme, under which it strives to bring everything.

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

Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.