“What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political.”

I feel an indescribable ecstasy and delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of being, in identifying myself with the whole of nature..

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

What good is it looking for our happiness in the opinion of others if we can find it in ourselves?

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.

One does not drink. One gives a kiss to his glass, and the wine returns a caress to you.

However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

Being wealthy isn’t just a question of having lots of money. It’s a question of what we want. Wealth isn’t an absolute, it’s relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can’t afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

Happiness requires three things, a good bank account, a good cook, and good digestion.

The real world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us restrict the other, for it is from the difference between the two alone that are born all the pains which make us truly unhappy.

MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

I may be skinny, but my love for you – its heavier than heavy.

Full nakedness! All my joys are due to thee, as souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, to taste whole joys.

Kindness is very indigestible. It disagrees with very proud stomachs.

I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.

To be no part of any body, is to be nothing.

We all live inside bodies that will deteriorate. But when you look at human beings, they’re capable of very decent things: love, loyalty. When time is running out, they don’t care about possessions or status. They want to put things right if they’ve done wrong.

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.

As with a wound on one’s own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things.