A motto of the human race: Let me do what I like, and give me approval as well.

The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.

A real secret is something which only one person knows.

To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

The more wakeful a man is to the things which surround him, the more asleep is he, and his waking is worse than his sleep.

Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal. Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.

A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions.