Quotations and Poems

» Action » “The person of intellect is lost unless they unite with energy of character. When we have the lantern of Diogenese we must also have his staff.”

» Books and Reading » “Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.”

» Cities and City Life » “Paris, a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four-fifths of the inhabitants die of grief. [About Paris]“

» Compatibility » “Sometimes apparent resemblance of character will bring two men together and for a certain time unite them. But their mistake gradually becomes evident, and they are astonished to find themselves not only far apart, but even repelled, in some sort, at all their points of contact.”

» Decency » “No law reaches it, but all right-minded people observe it.”

» Education » “Education must have two foundations –morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.”

» Experience » “Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.”

» Fame » “Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don’t know, and who don’t know us.”

» Fashion » “Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.”

» Fools and Foolishness » “How many fools does it take to make up a public?”

» Getting Ahead » “It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.”

» Good Deeds » “Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.”

» Ideas » “There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.”

» Ideas » “A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.”

» Illusion » “Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.”

» Independence » “Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.”

» Intelligence and Intellectuals » “A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.”

» Justice » “We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.”

» Laughter » “The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.”

» Law and Lawyers » “Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.”

» Life and Death » “Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It’s a palliative. The remedy is death.”

» Lovers » “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.”

» Men and Women » “Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.”

» Mind » “Conviction is the conscience of the mind.”

» Money » “Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.”

» Morality » “The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.”

» Nations » “If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.”

» Passion » “All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.”

» Philosophers and Philosophy » “Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.”

» Pleasure » “Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.”

» Public Opinion » “There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.”

» Reason » “People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.”

» Respectability » “Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.”

» Scandal » “Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.”

» Secrets » “Secrecy is best taught by starting with ourselves.”

» Society » “Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.”

» Society » “Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.”

» Success » “Success makes success, like money makes money.”

» Tact and Tactfulness » “The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.”

» Writers and Writing » “An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.”