Our happiness often depends upon social hypocrisies to which we will never stoop.

Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.

Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.

Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is the myth of criticism and the symbol of genius. Only God is triangular!

Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind.

Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.

When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen.