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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.