“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.”

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.

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.

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.

The man who meditates is a depraved animal.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.

Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.

America was born a Christian nation.

Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.

Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was fifth.

When I was born, I was effectively dead. Weird, I know. The doctors couldn’t get any reaction from me, so I had to be brought round, and although it seemed like I was okay, there were underlying problems.

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page

Where you have come from is why you are going places.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

I just don’t care what people have to say. I keep pushing toward what I want. It’s just how I am. I don’t know where I got it from.