There are people like zeros: they always need a number in front of them.
Perhaps virtue is nothing but delicacy of soul.
Only kings, whores and thieves can feel at home everywhere.
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism set in motion by dwarves.
In old age, love turns into a vice.
In prose we remain on solid ground, and in poetry we must rise to immeasurable heights.
At fifty, a man is more dangerous than at any other age, because he has expensive experience and wealth.
Great men have always been sparing of food.
Equality may be a right, but no human power is able to change it into reality.
Will can and should be an object of pride more than talent. If talent is the development of natural inclinations, then a firm will is the minute victory over the instincts and passions which the will restrains and suppresses, over the obstacles and hindrances which it overcomes over all kinds of difficulties which it heroically overcomes .
Time is the capital of a man with intellectual concerns.
Everything comes in due time to those who know how to wait.
All human craftsmanship is not a mixture of patience and time.
There are men whose stupidity and obstinacy truly surpass all that can be expected of a creature of God.
All power is a continuous conspiracy.
There are two kinds of stupidity: silent and talkative.
The stupidity is so great that it is impossible to investigate it to the end, no echo is born in it, it absorbs everything irrevocably.
To talk about love is to make love.
Pain is the most persistent of all our senses.
Civil courage and military courage come from the same source.
It is not at all enough to show that the present is greater than the past: the foreboding of the future that is greater than our present must be evoked.
Money is necessary even if you can get by without it.
Virtues can also be harmful if they are not enlightened by reason.
Virtue is an indivisible thing: it either is or it is not.
We are tired of big wars; it seems to me that the time has come for a great peace.
Friendship between two saints does more harm than sincere enmity between ten villains.
If you talk to yourself all the time, you will always be right.
If the wife started talking about the economy, it means that your stocks started to fall.
If a man is good-natured and sociable, women are interested not in where he came from, but where he wants to go.
If you don't believe in yourself, you can't be a genius.