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

Men do not so much hate an evil-doer, or evil itself, as they hate the man who calls evil by its real name.

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

No human trait deserves less tolerance in everyday life, and gets less, than intolerance.

Irresolute men are sometimes very persistent in their undertakings, because if they give up their designs they would have to make a second resolution.

Every man remembers his childhood as a kind of mythical age, just as every nation's childhood is its mythical age.

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.