The world is the book of women. Whatever knowledge they may possess is more commonly acquired by observation than by reading.

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates; the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

My bad head cannot adjust itself to the way things are.... If I want to depict spring, it has to be in wintertime; if I want to describe a beautiful landscape, I must be enclosed within walls; and I have said a hundred times that if I were put in the Bastille, there I would paint a picture of liberty.

A feeble body weakens the mind.

The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin.

There is no evildoer who could not be made good for something.