“How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!”

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

Memories beautify life, but the capacity to forget makes it bearable.

Love, according to our contemporary poets, is a privilege which two beings confer upon one another, whereby they may mutually cause one another much sorrow over absolutely nothing.

It is as absurd to say that a man can’t love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

Art’s greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.

Women see everything or nothing according to the inclination of their hearts. Love is their sole light.

If we all said to people’s faces what we say behind one another’s backs, society would be impossible.

The greater a man’s talents, the more marked his idiosyncracies. Yet in the provinces originality is considered perilously close to lunacy.

The more you judge, the less you love.

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

I have come not to disturb or destroy any faith, but to confirm each in his own faith – so that the Christian becomes a better Christian, the Muslim, a better Muslim, and the Hindu, a better Hindu.

Time perfects men as well as destroys them.

A debt should be paid off till the last penny; An enemy should be destroyed without a trace.

The biggest guru-mantra is: never share your secrets with anybody. It will destroy you.

I need to remind myself all the time that being afraid of things going wrong, is not the way to make things right. All fear has ever done is try destroy any existing hope I have.

Beauty is spoiled by an immoral nature; noble birth by bad conduct; learning, without being perfected; and wealth by not being properly utilised.

England is a very strong league, with three or four of the best teams in Europe, but, if I had played there, I would have destroyed it, like I have everywhere else.