We study ourselves three weeks, we love each other three months, we squabble three years, we tolerate each other thirty years, and then the children start all over again.

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

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.

In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.

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

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

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