“Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn’t illegal.”

Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

In every province, the chief occupations, in order of importance, are lovemaking, malicious gossip, and talking nonsense.

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is too afraid to laugh.

The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.

It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.

Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them.

It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.

Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

When a man is in love, jealous, and just whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself.

The more a man knows, the less he talks.

When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.

Body time flows at its own variable rate, oblivious to the most precise hydrogen master clocks in the laboratory. In fact, the human body contains its own exquisite time-pieces, all with their separate rhythms.

We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.

Sin ought to be something exquisite, my dear boy.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.

He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.