“Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, must learn to brave censure.”

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

Either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the world is not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized.

I like to use significant words.

I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial.

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed – my dearest pleasure when free.

Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify our desire for knowledge than our best-laid plans.

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he just mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, rather than to root them out.

Into this error men have, probably, been led by viewing education in a false light; not considering it as the first step to form a being advancing gradually towards perfection; but only as a preparation for life.

All power inebriates weak man; and its abuse proves that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

Still the men stand up for the dignity of man, by oppressing the women.

But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

A king is always a king-and a woman always a woman: his authority and her sex, ever stand between them and rational converse.

Errors are often useful; but it is commonly to remedy other errors.

I’d never worry about age if I knew I could go on being loved and have the possibility to love.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

The only transformer and alchemist that turns everything into gold is love. The only magic against death, aging, ordinary life, is love.

Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age.

People want to find a meaning in everything and everyone. That’s the disease of our age.

Youth can not know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

Youth has no age.