It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

She commands who is blest with indifference.

It is children only who enjoy the present; their elders either live on the memory of the past or the hope of the future.

The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.

When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.

Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.