“One can be well-bred and write bad poetry.”

There are pretenders to piety as well as to courage.

Virtue is the first title of nobility.

Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.

Perfect good sense shuns all extremity, content to couple wisdom with sobriety.

They would have everybody be as blind as themselves: to them, to be clear-sighted is libertinism.

It’s an odd job, making decent people laugh.

Oh, I may be devout, but I am human all the same.

Words and deeds are far from being one. Much that is talked about is left undone.

Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.

Of all human foibles love of living is the most powerful.

He must have killed a lot of men to have made so much money.

How strange it is to see with how much passion People see things only in their own fashion!

If you make yourself understood, you’re always speaking well.

There is no fate more distressing for an artist than to have to show himself off before fools, to see his work exposed to the criticism of the vulgar and ignorant.

Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man.

Perfect reason flees all extremity, and leads one to be wise with sobriety.

The truth is in nature, and I shall prove it.

Box office figures are not something that can decide the success of a film on its own, but they are one of the many yardsticks that help me measure how well a film has been received.

Suppose no one asked a question. What would the answer be?

The life of this world and the hereafter, in the heart of a person are like the two scales of a balance, when one becomes heavier, the other becomes lighter

Pleasure must be found in study.

The approbation of others is a stimulus of which one must sometimes be wary. The feeling of one’s own strength makes one modest.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.

People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.