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.

Ignorance is the greatest source of happiness.

Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure.

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

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

It's interesting to observe that almost all truly worthy men have simple manners, and that simple manners are almost always taken as a sign of little worth

The thought that really crushes us is the thought of the futility of life of which death is the visible manifestation.