Unattainable wishes are often "pious." This seems to indicate that only profane wishes are fulfilled.

Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak.

Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.

All that is due to us will be paid, although not perhaps by those to whom we have lent.

If you have one good idea, people will lend you twenty.

There are women who love their husbands as blindly, as enthusiastically, and as enigmatically as nuns their cloister.

Runners are poor walkers.