Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.

The artist's conception of his art or the scientist's of his science is usually as great as his conception of his own worth is small.

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.

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.

Men seldom act from a correct sense of what may be harmful or useful to them.

The end of pain we take as happiness.

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