"Superficial knowledge ... is hurtful to those who possess true genius; for it necessarily draws them away from their main object, wastes their industry over details and subjects foreign to their needs and natural talent, and lastly does not serve, as they flatter themselves, to prove the breadth of their mind. In all ages there have been men of very moderate intelligence who knew much, and so on the contrary, men of the highest intelligence who knew very little. Ignorance is not lack of intelligence, nor knowledge a proof of genius."

"La nécessité nous délivre de l'embarras du choix."

"Les grandes pensées viennent du coeur."

"Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for."

"The favorites of fortune or of fame topple from their pedestals before our eyes without diverting us from ambition."

"L'espérance fait plus de dupes que l'habileté."

"It is proof of a narrow mind when things worthy of esteem are distinguished from things worthy of love. Great minds naturally love whatever is worthy of their esteem."

"La foi est la consolation des misérables et la terreur des heureux."

"The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones."

"La modération des grands hommes ne borne que leurs vices. La modération des faibles est médiocrité."

"Lazy people are always looking for something to do."

"Our failings sometimes bind us to one another as closely as could virtue itself."

"The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught."

"Emotion has taught mankind to reason."

"Equality is not a law of nature. Nature has made no two things equal: its sovereign law is subordination and dependence."

"Men dissimulate their dearest, most constant, and most virtuous inclination from weakness and a fear of being condemned."

"There is nothing that fear or hope does not make men believe."

"Truth is the sun of the intelligence."

"Patience is the art of hoping."

"No one wishes to be pitied on account of his errors."

"There are few things that we know well."

"Great men undertake great things because they are great, and fools because they think them easy."

"Virtue is so praiseworthy that wicked people practice it from self-interest."

"We quarrel with unfortunates to be exempted from pitying them."

"Constancy is the chimera of love."

"Fools never understand people of wit."

"We promise much, that we may give little."

"Great thoughts spring from the heart."

"Servitude debases man to a degree that leads him to love it."

"In order to do great things, we should live as though we were never to die."

"If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate."

"You can purchase the mind of Pascal for a crown. Pleasures even cheaper are sold to those who give themselves up to them. It is only luxuries and objects of caprice that are rare and difficult to obtain; unfortunately they are the only things that touch the curiosity and taste of ordinary men."

"Some are born to invent, others to embellish; but the gilder attracts more attention than the architect."

"Great men are sometimes so even in small things."

"When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself."

"It cannot be a vice in men to be sensible of their strength."

"Whatever affection we have for our friends or relations, the happiness of others never suffices for our own."

"There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome."

"Men crowd into honorable careers without other vocation than their vanity, or at best their love of fame."

"Children are ... encouraged to be imitators, a course to which they are already too much inclined. No one thinks of making them original, courageous, independent."

"If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulses of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavor is to subdue our children’s spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life."

"Prosperity makes few friends."

"It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts."

"War is not as onerous as servitude."

"Indolence is the sleep of the mind."

"(What moves you most in a work of literature?) I’m not yet the writer I aspire to be, but at my age, great books written by women over 60 give me hope. Diana Athill, Colette, Harriett Doerr, Marguerite Duras, Grace Paley, Elena Poniatowska, Jean Rhys, Mercé Rodoreda, to name but a few."

"Alcohol doesn’t console, it doesn’t fill up anyone’s psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn’t comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny."

"Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it."

"Writing is not speaking. It's silencing yourself. It's screaming without noise."