The most solid pleasure in this life is the empty pleasure of illusion.

Men are ready to suffer anything from others or from heaven itself, provided that, when it comes to words, they are untouched.

It's not our disadvantages or shortcomings that are ridiculous, but rather the studious way we try to hide them, and our desire to act as if they did not exist.

There are some centuries which - apart from everything else - in the art and other disciplines presume to remake everything because they know how to make nothing.

Since the world never faults a man who refuses to yield...it is generally recognized that weak men live in obedience to the world's will, while the strong obey only their own.

Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.

He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.