Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

Women love only those whom they do not know!

We almost always forgive those we understand.

I have a congenital desire to contradict; my whole life is merely a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions to heart and mind. When faced with enthusiasm, I am seized by a midwinter freeze, and I suppose that frequent dealings with sluggish phlegmatics would have made a passionate dreamer.

If only people thought a little more about it, they would see that life is not worrying about so much.

We survive on novelty, so much less demanding than commitment.

When we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again.