A vain man can never be utterly ruthless: he wants to win applause and therefore he accommodates himself to others

No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist.

All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency.

Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life.

Wherever a man may happen to turn, whatever a man may undertake, he will always end up by returning to that path which nature has marked out for him.

We love a girl for very different qualities than understanding. We love her for her beauty, her youth, her mirth, her confidingness, her character, with its faults, caprices and God knows what other inexpressible charms; but we do not love her understanding.

One can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days