People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not.

He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die.

The old man, especially if he is in society in the privacy of his thoughts, though he may protest the opposite, never stops believing that, through some singular exception of the universal rule, he can in some unknown and inexplicable way still make an impression on women.

Nothing in the world is so rare as a person one can always put up with.

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

Man is doomed either squander his youth, which is the only time he has to store provisions for the coming years and provide for his own well-being, or to spend his youth procuring pleasures in advance for that time of life when he will be too old to enjoy them.

If content with himself and mankind, a man is never harsh or curt.