Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

It takes two to make a love affair and a mans meat is too often a woman's poison.

I never met an author who admitted that people did not buy his book because it was dull.

Everyone had some defect, or body or of mind: he thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a sick house and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long procession, deformed in body, warped in mind, some with illness of the flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit, languor of will, or craving for liquor. At that moment he felt a holy compassion for them all. …The words of the dying God crossed his memory: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.

It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.