A day without laughter is a day wasted.
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely paralyse before we can live happily in this world.
Love is more pleasant than marriage for the same reason that novels are more amusing than history.
Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
Society is composed of two great classes those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.
The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.
Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.
All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.
The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.
Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
