“Where poverty ceases, avarice begins.”

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.

To be happy, a man must love his wife as she chooses to be loved.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

Before the film begins shooting, in your head, you need to be the character. You have to convince yourself somehow.

Madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom.

Love my small team, proud of our sweet beginnings, every step feels so rewarding.

Beginners are many; finishers are few.

If you want to change your life, begin by changing your words. Start speaking the words of your dreams, of who you want to become, not the words of fear or failure.

The very desire to be certain, to be secure, is the beginning of bondage.It’s only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty, and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery.

All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.

The feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.