The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.

Women prefer emotions to reasoning.

When you want to court a woman, court her sister first

I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.

God's only excuse is that he does not exist.

I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.

Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.

The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.

Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.

Only great minds can afford a simple style.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.

I have fled my country and gone to the heather.