“When collapse is imminent, the little rodents flee.”

I think it is the most beautiful and humane thing in the world, so to mingle gravity with pleasure that the one may not sink into melancholy, nor the other rise up into wantonness.

From the end spring new beginnings.

The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.

Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides.

Lust is an enemy to the purse, a foe to the person, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter of the senses, and finally, a mortal bane to all the body.

A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.

The only thing man knows instinctively is how to weep.

Our civilization depends largely on paper.

Nature has given man no better thing than shortness of life.

The lust of avarice as so totally seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them than they possess their wealth.

It has become quite a common proverb that in wine there is truth.

Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides.

Man is the only one that knows nothing, that can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak nor walk nor eat, and in short he can do nothing at the prompting of nature only, but weep.

There is always something new out of Africa.

Nothing is more useful than wine for strengthening the body and also more detrimental to our pleasure if moderation be lacking.

We live by reposing trust in each other.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

I’ve always been in the theater. I’ve always gone to it. That’s been my way to cope.

Early on in my career, I remember running – fleeing – to the theater as a way of coping with all the meshugaas that was going on for me.

When Harvey’s violent passion she did see, Began to tremble and to flee; Took sanctuary, like Daphne, in a tree

Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne’er will from me flee, A mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov’d and loving me.

If you desire the path of sincerity, develop a love for obscurity. Flee from the clatter and clinks of fame.