The more he became truly wise, the more he distrusted everything he knew.

Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.

What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.

Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though I shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things.

I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little important and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.

The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.

It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.