The philosopher is a person who refuses no pleasures which do not produce greater sorrows, and who knows how to create new ones.

When a man is in love very little is enough to throw him into despair and as little to enhance his joy to the utmost.

When you fool a fool you strike a blow for intelligence.

If I had married a woman intelligent enough to guide me, to rule me without my feeling that I was ruled, I should have taken good care of my money, I should have had children, and I should not be, as now I am, alone in the world and possessing nothing.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.

After all, a beautiful woman without a mind of her own leaves her lover with no resource after he had physically enjoyed her charms.

By recollecting the pleasures I have had formerly, I renew them, I enjoy them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now past, and which I no longer feel.