I've met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.

To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once.

History is nothing but a problem of mechanics applied to psychology.

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.

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

Change a virtue in its circumstances find it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.

There are as many kinds of modesty as there are races. To the English woman it is a duty; to the French woman a propriety.