Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.

Change, change,--we all covet change.

Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.

Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!

Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.

Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.