“Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.”

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.

Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.

In intimate family life, there comes a moment when children, willingly or no, become the judges of their parents.

Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life.

And every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan.

Remember, if you are criticising, you are not being grateful. If you are blaming, you are not being grateful. If you are complaining, you are not being grateful.

I finally had what I’d wanted all those years. Except now that I had it, i felt as empty as this unkempt pool I was dangling my legs into.

It’s impossible to feel sad or have any negative feeling when you’re grateful. If you’re in the midst of a difficult situation, look for something to be grateful for.

I haven’t known life to be any happier.

It only takes a few minutes in the morning to use gratitude to Have A Magical Day by giving thanks for the events in your day ahead of time, but this one practice alone will change the way your entire day unfolds.

One of the greatest, smartest things I ever did was give my kids Angie as their mom. She is such a great mom. Oh, man, I’m so happy to have her.

A single farmer can feed the whole town, but no one will ever notice his death. Except when they are feeling hungry again. That’s the nature and ingratitude of humanity.