The thing I fear most is fear.

Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

My trade and art is to live.

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness.

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.

For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.