We remember childhood as the fabulous years of our lives, and nations remember their childhood as fabulous years.

I may be wrong, but it seems rare in our age to find a widely praised person whose own mouth is not the source of that praise.

Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.

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 greater part of the people we assign to educate our sons we know for certain are not educated. Yet we do not doubt that they can give what they have not received, a thing which cannot be otherwise acquired.

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.

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