We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hair and ideas; there comes a time when he necessarily loses his teeth, hair and ideas.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.

My life's dream has been a perpetual nightmare.

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.

We’re neither pure, nor wise, nor good; we do the best we know.