Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In a discussion, the difficulty lies, not in being able to defend your opinion, but to know it.
An unsatisfied woman requires luxury, but a woman who is in love with a man will lie on a board.
Smile, for everyone lacks self-confidence and more than any other one thing a smile reassures them.
There are very few really brilliant men who have not had at least one madman among their ancestors.
The minds of different generations are as impenetrable one by the other as are the monads of Leibniz.
The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.
If you value a man's regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper - and despise it.
The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.
Every ten years you should delete from your mind a few ideas that your experience has proven to be false.
For intelligent people, action often means escape from thought, but it is a reasonable and a wise escape.
Few are they who have never had a chance to achieve happiness- and fewer those who have taken that chance.
A great man's manias must be respected, because the time required to combat them is too precious to waste.
I knew a man who had been virtually drowned and then revived. He said that his death had not been painful.
A true woman loves a strong man because she knows his weaknesses. She protects as much as she is protected.
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
Marriage makes a man more vulnerable by doubling the expanse of sail exposed to the tempests of social life.
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.
Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true; everything that is not puts us in a rage.
Artificial inflation of stocks must be considered a crime as serious as counterfeiting, which it closely resembles.
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
He who has found a good wife has found great happiness, but a quarrelsome woman is like a roof that lets in the rain.
There are deserts in every life, and the desert must be depicted if we are to give a fair and complete idea of the country.
Experience is valuable only when it has brought suffering and when the suffering has left its mark upon both body and mind.
The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book.
One has very little influence upon one's children. Their characters are what they are and one can do nothing to change them.
The art of growing old is the art of being regarded by the oncoming generations as a support and not as a stumbling-block...
[...] marriage is one thing, and love is another...You need to have a solid canvas; nobody stops you to weave the arabesques.
Two human beings anchored to one another are like two ships shaken by waves; their carcases collide with one another and creak.
We don't go to school to learn, but to be soaked in the prejudices of our class, without which we should be useless and unhappy.
If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.
All of us, from time to time, need a plunge into freedom and novelty, after which routine and discipline will seem delightful by contrast.
Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late.
Love born of anxiety resembles a thorn shaped so that efforts to pull it out of one's flesh merely cause it to penetrate more deeply therein.
Memory is a great artist. For every man and for every woman it makes the recollection of his or her life a work of art and an unfaithful record.
The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.
Learning is nothing without cultivated manners, but when the two are combined in a woman, you have one of the most exquisite products of civilization.
A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.
It is restful to leave one's home; not because traveling does not entail varied and difficult daily actions, but because it removes our responsibilities.
Either the soul is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes with the flesh and we shall not know that we are dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal.
Information is not culture. In the mind of a truly educated person, facts are organized, and they make up a living world in the image of the world of reality.
The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.
The greedy search for money or success will almost always lead men into unhappiness. Why? Because that kind of life makes them depend upon things outside themselves.
Like a bird, when his cage is opened, stays on his perch, dazzled by freedom, the postponed traveler does not see that his cage, with its bars of anxiety, it is open.
If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.
The need to express one's self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action.
British conversation is like a game of cricket or a boxing match; personal allusions are forbidden like hitting below the belt, and anyone who loses his temper is disqualified.
What men call friendship is only social intercourse, an exchange of favours and good offices; it comes down to a commercial dealing in which self-esteem always expects to profit.
To desire to be perpetually in the society of a pretty woman until the end of one's days, is as if, because one likes good wine, one wished always to have one's mouth full of it.
Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one's first productions.