Wise people are foolish if they cannot adapt to foolish people.

A liar would be brave toward God, while he is a coward toward men; for a lie faces God, and shrinks from man.

Were I to live my life over again, I should live it just as I have done. I neither complain of the past, nor do I fear the future.

Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

Speaking is half his that speaks, and half his that hears.

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?