It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.
In art as in love, instinct is enough.
There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will. Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.
The pseudonym for God when He did not want to sign.
Chance is the pseudonym God uses when He does not want to sign His name.
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
We reproach people for talking about themselves; but it is the subject they treat best.
I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.
Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.
That man is prudent who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.
The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.
History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.
It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.
It is well for the heart to be naive and the mind not to be.
Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.
Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness.
It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.
It is almost systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no difference between right and wrong.
Nature has no principles. She makes no distinction between good and evil.
When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.
I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation.
It is better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them.