The search for causes must come after the collection of facts.

I wish to reproduce things as they are or as they would be even if I myself did not exist.

Four varieties in society: lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.

Amid this vast and overwhelming space and in these boundless solar archipelagoes, how small is our own sphere, and the earth, what a grain of sand!

The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies.

Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.

There are four types of men in the world: lovers, opportunists, lookers-on, and imbeciles. The happiest are the imbeciles.