“Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky.”

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

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.

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

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.

Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being black meant everything was stacked against me.

It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

The looks, the stares, the giggles . . . I wanted to show everybody that I could do better and also that I could read.

I want – I want – I want – was all that she could think about – but just what this real want was she did not know.

If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.

Madonna wasn’t an acrobat or anything, but the sex was good. I could tell she liked it.