“Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.”

It is as absurd to say that a man can’t love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

Art’s greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.

Women see everything or nothing according to the inclination of their hearts. Love is their sole light.

If we all said to people’s faces what we say behind one another’s backs, society would be impossible.

The greater a man’s talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

The more you judge, the less you love.

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.

Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life.

Call no man happy until he is dead.

The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage.

Each say following another, either hastening or putting off our death–what pleasure does it bring? I count that man worthless whois cheered by empty hopes. No, a noble man must either live or die well.

knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom, and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy’s onset.

The only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can’t change. After I die, I’ll probably come back as a paintbrush.

I would suggest that the next generation stop looking for happiness outside of themselves but instead turn inward.

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.

What makes me most happy is connecting with others. I love meeting new people, being social, and engaging in empowering discussions.