Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said.

All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.

Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.

There is no such thing as an accident. What we call by that name is the effect of some cause which we do not see.

Wine is the divine juice of September.

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.