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.

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.

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.

His tongue is by turns a sponge, a brush, a comb. He cleans himself, he smooths himself, he knows what is proper.

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

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!

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