A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.

Death is in truth an illness from which we recover

No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

People who, not being in love themselves, feel that a clever man should only be unhappy about a person who is worth his while; which is rather like being astonished that anyone should condescend to die of cholera at the bidding of so insignificant a creature as the comma bacillus.

Just as those who practice the same profession recognize each other instinctively, so do those who practice the same vice.

A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.