Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.

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

The most wasted day of all is that on which we have not laughed.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.

She commands who is blest with indifference.

In a country where everyone strives for attention, it is better to be bankrupt than to be nothing.