The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

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

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.

The commonplace expression that life is nothing but a play is verified above all in this: the world speaks absolutely consistently in one way and acts absolutely consistently in another.

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.

Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards.

Everything since Homer has improved, except poetry.