A deist is an atheist with an eye cocked for the off-chance of some advantage.

Kindness steers no easy course. Attributing it to character, we seldom recognize the secret efforts of a noble heart, whereas we reward really wicked people for the evil they refrain from committing.

Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.

We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.

Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.