“Perfect is the enemy of good.”

The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good are the two most important aims of philosophy.

It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.

Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them.

Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them.

The battle that never ends is the battle of belief against disbelief.

It’s a man’s sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a poet.

We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

Our problems are not really the problem, but our reaction to it can be the actual problem.

You are who you are when no one is watching.

My mother was given to a typical question: “We have always done this. Why should we do anything else?” But my wife’s typical question was “We have always done this. Why don’t we do it another way or, better still, why not do something else?”

We think that success equals happiness, but this idea is an illusion.

A monk mind practices detachment. We realize that everything—from our houses to our families—is borrowed.