“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”

This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all as the most egregious of sins. It is one step away from protestantism.

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.

It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.

Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.

The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.

In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives.

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?

To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.

One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.

A good book is an event in my life.

Spring appears and we are once more children.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.

Don’t tell anyone what you got planned they won’t understand it or will try to prevent it. Be great in silence. The magic is within your creation, not within the opinion. Strive to be better than what anyone expects.

What is the government? Nothing, unless supported by opinion.

Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.

Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.

What good is it looking for our happiness in the opinion of others if we can find it in ourselves?

I keep my opinions to myself. I’ve always said that everyone is free to think what you like.

Everyone is entitled to my opinion