“Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.”

If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.

The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

The finest souls are those that have the most variety and suppleness.

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

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

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

I think people don’t realize how little of being an artist is making art.

People won’t want powers being handed back from bureaucrats in Brussels to be given to bureaucrats in Britain.

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich.

I simply haven’t the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being.

Fashion is a way of not having to decide who you are. Style is deciding who you are and being able to perpetuate it.

I had a friend who had two degrees of being made up: when invited I would say ‘Can I make up?’ and he would say ‘Oh yes – tinted?’, or he would say, ‘Oh yes – clotted?’