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!

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

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.

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

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

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.