Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.

Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.

Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

The best philosophical attitude to adopt towards the world is a union of the sarcasm of gaiety with the indulgence of contempt.

The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.

Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.