"To protect one's self against the storms of passion, marriage with a good woman is a harbour in the tempest; but with a bad woman, it proves a tempest in the harbour."

"Love for old men is sun on the snow: it dazzles more than it warms them."

"Happiness is the shadow of man: remembrance of it follows him; hope of it precedes him."

"What we gain by experience is not worth what we lose in illusion."

"We salute more willingly an acquaintance in a carriage than a friend on foot."

"Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."

"For one Orpheus who went to Hell to seek his wife, how many widowers who would not even go to Paradise to find theirs!"

"Let us respect white hair — especially our own."

"A child becomes for his parents, according to the education he receives, a blessing or a chastisement."

"We know the value of a fortune when we have gained it, and that of a friend when we have lost it."

"Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under the wrinkles of age: one is lost in them, the other hidden."

"The flavour of detached thoughts depends upon the conciseness of their expression: for thoughts are grains of sugar, or of salt, that must be melted in a drop of water."

"Promises retain men better than services. For them, hope is a chain, and gratitude a thread."

"We like to give in the sunlight, and to receive in the dark."

"Yes, the words, the land of my birth, they console me and compensate, but they would not bring me my mother back."

"My true single consolation is that she is not present to see me in my agony of her death."

"Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain."

"With her alone I could be far away from everyone."

"Brothers, my human brothers, force me to believe in eternal life."

"Only with her I was not alone, now I am alone with everyone."

"She answers no more, the one who used to answer always."

"Human friends, friends in hardship and in life, this is our pure love, love of mother and son."

"She does not talk anymore, the one who used to talk so pleasantly."

"Go away, image of my living mother, full of life, as I saw her in France for the last time. Go away! My mother's ghost."

"In my solitude I sing to myself a sweet lullaby, as sweet as my mother used to sing to me."

"I say to myself that her small hands are no more worm, and that I would never again carry them soft to my front."

"Never again I would know her slow kisses which are hardly felt. Never again the ringing mourning bells, songs of the dead that we loved."

"In my sleep, which is the song of the tombs, I have just seen her again, as beautiful as in her youth."

"Diversity is life; uniformity is death."

"Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j’ai vécu avec elle."

"The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of liberty in private pleasures, and they call “liberty” the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures."

"The older you get the simpler you want to make it."

"How much frankness can we stand in a friend?"

"I feel fairly certain that my hatred harms me more than the people whom I hate."

"That a plot has no real life of its own; it exists only in it's precipitates. It cannot be distilled but only crystallized- in which form it is then immutable, whether successful or unsuccessful: once and for all"

"Plots- it seems there are thousands of them, all one's acquaintances known some, strangers make a present of them in letters, each the basis for a play or a novel..."

"Where the works gives scope for individuality, one sees a blossoming of self respect"

"What hope have you know given up ?"

"Your virtuous living is your enemy's best and cheapest weapon"

"One can be resolved to promote good, or one can be resolved to be a good person- Two separate things that are mutually exclusive"

"What makes Shakespeare so overwhelming is the way in which the situation (who is confronting whom) is usually itself part of the composition, meaningful already as a situation"

"Why there are so many great actresses, so few great woman writers? The erotic urge that lies at the bottom of all art has a feminine and a masculine character. Feminine is the urge to be; masculine the urge to do. Interpretative art always has more of the feminine about it"

"Wer sich nicht mit Politik befaßt, hat die politische Parteinahme, die er sich sparen möchte, bereits vollzogen: er dient der herrschenden Partei."

"People with the same education as my own, speaking the same words that I do, loving the same books, the same music, the same paintings, are by no means immune from the danger of turning into monsters and doing things we would not have thought possible among the people of our own day, apart from a few pathological exceptions. If they are not immune, Why should I be so confident of my own immunity?"

"Theatrical effectiveness, I believe, lies in it's rarity its uniqueness"

"Are you friend with yourself ?"

"Half a lifetime is spent with the unspoken question: Will it happen will it not?"

"Finished things cease to be a shelter for the spirit; but work in progress is a delight"

"(Present) it is a culture that strictly ignores present obligations and places itself entirely at the service of eternity"

"To write is to read one's own self"