“Too chaste a youth leads to a dissolute old age.”

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

You have to let other people be right’ was his answer to their insults. ‘It consoles them for not being anything else.

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does, the better.

Trust those who seek the truth but doubt those who say they have found it.

The funny thing about love is that it must continually grow or it will diminish.

What would a narrative of happiness be like? All that can be described is what prepares it, and then what destroys it.

Envying another man’s happiness is madness; you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you had it.

Man is more interesting than men. God made him and not them in his image. Each one is more precious than all.

Sin is whatever obscures the soul.

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

A man thinks he owns things, and it is he who is owned.

Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else.

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.

The capacity to get free is nothing; the capacity to be free is the task.

Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.

Men are most virile and most attractive between the ages of 35 and 55. Under 35 a man has too much to learn, and I don’t have time to teach him.

I don’t worry about a number. I’m fine with aging.

Education is a liberating force, and in our age it is also a democratizing force, cutting across the barriers of caste and class, smoothing out inequalities imposed by birth and other circumstances.

Do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age.

Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today.

What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.

One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.

Age is the first limitation on roles that I’ve ever had to encounter, and I hit that a while ago.