“I have lived one hundred years; and I die with the consolation of never having thrown the slightest ridicule upon the smallest virtue.”

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.

Let us be well assured of the Matter of Fact, before we trouble our selves with enquiring into the Cause. It is true, that this Method is too slow for the greatest part of Mankind, who run naturally to the Cause, and pass over the Truth of the Matter of Fact.

Ah! si l’on o” tait les chime’ res aux hommes, quel plaisir leur resterait? Oh! If man were robbed of his fantasies, what pleasure would be left him?

I hate war, for it spoils conversation.

Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.

Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.

Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am. I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance.

I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.

If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.

I detest war; it ruins conversation

The Art of Flying is but newly invented, twill improve by degrees, and in time grow perfect; then we may fly as far as the Moon.

It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.

There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.

To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.

It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.

An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.

The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.

Practice being in the present. Do what you’re doing 100%.

When I got my Nobel Prize, I had spent hardly 200 rupees on my equipment.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

One step in the right direction is better than a hundred years of thinking about it.

Rich people see every dollar as a “seed” that can be planted to earn a hundred more dollars, which can then be replanted to earn a thousand more dollars.

As a woman of color, I always have to be at 150 percent and better than everybody in the room to be considered competent.

And I imagine, that [ten hundred thousand] of these little Creatures do not equal an ordinary grain of Sand in bigness: And comparing them with a Cheese-mite (which may be seen to move with the naked eye)