“There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.”

We are Christians by the same title as we are natives of Perigord or Germany.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Few men have been admired of their familiars.

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

In nine lifetimes, you’ll never know as much about your cat as your cat knows about you.

Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.

The beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.

I know what it takes to balance budgets. I have done it my entire life.

When I love, I do it without counting. I give myself entirely. And each time, it is the grand love of my life.

Your soul holds the entire night sky.

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.

Knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.

Knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.