“By the work one knows the workman.”

The more wary you are of danger, the more likely you are to meet it.

We ought to consider the end in everything.

Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish.

A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse.

We read on the foreheads of those who are surrounded by a foolish luxury, that fortune sells what she is thought to give.

Nothing is so oppressive as a secret: women find it difficult to keep one long; and I know a goodly number of men who are women in this regard.

To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism – this is the art of living.

Let ignorance talk as it will, learning has its value.

We heed no instincts but our own.

The best laid plot can injure its maker, and often a man’s perfidy will rebound on himself.

All the brains in the world are powerless against the sort of stupidity that is in fashion.

If you deal with a fox, think of his tricks.

Still people are dangerous.

A hare is not caught with a drum.

If every man works at that for which nature fitted him, the cows will be well tended.

Habit, to which all of us are more or less slaves.

Believing that no one is better than the other. You know I grew up in the South. My senior year there was a very big racial tension.

The things that seem to matter less, are the ones we put on show.

And you said ecstasy was a storm cloud, just before the rain would burst into the night sky, like a thousand aquatic stars-and not one single moment before.

Searching for the one thing, that would set my sad soul free.

There are many things in life you can postpone, but love isn’t one of them.

That’s the thing about writers – on one hand everything is sacred to them, but, on the other, nothing really is.

To forget oneself is to be happy.

The surest way to be deceived is to consider oneself cleverer than others.