We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
It is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.
Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.
The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
I only study the things I like; I apply my mind only to matters that interest me. They'll be useful-or useless-to me or to others in due course, I'll be given-or not given-the opportunity of benefiting from what I've learned. In any case, I'll have enjoyed the inestimable advantage of doing things I like doing and following my own inclinations.
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.
Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.
Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
One can be certain that every generally held idea, every received notion, will be idiocy because it has been able to appeal to the majority
And so I leave this world, where the heart must either break or turn to lead (suicide note)
It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.
Calumny is like the wasp which worries you, and which it is not best to try to get rid of unless you are sure of slaying it; for otherwise it returns to the charge more furious than ever.
When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.
Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.
Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.
A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.
It is passion that makes man live; wisdom makes one only last.
Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
Anyone whose needs are small seems threatening to the rich, because he's always ready to escape their control.
Every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.
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