“He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.”
“Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.”
“If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.”
“We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.”
“To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.”
“There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.”
“We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy at least until we have become as clever as they are.”
“If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.”
“He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.”
“That man is the noblest creature may also be inferred from the fact that no other creature has yet contested this claim.”
“I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up...”
“Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.”
“The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.”
“Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.”
“If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.”
“Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.”
“What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.”
“I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.”
“It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.”
“Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.”
“Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.”
“With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.”
“To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.”
“The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.”
“Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.”
“The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.”
“We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.”
“The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.”
“There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.”
“It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.”