 For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the more it keeps silent. |
| You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools. |
| I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools. |
| The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory. |
| I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms. |
| I have had friends who have acted kindly towards me, and it has been my good fortune to have it in my power to give them substantial proofs of my gratitude. |
| I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except myself. |
| As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other. |
| My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. |
| We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victory not to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is often very hard to find his vulnerable part. |
| In fact, to gull a fool seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man. |
| I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent. |
| Real love is the love that sometimes arises after sensual pleasure: if it does, it is immortal; the other kind inevitably goes stale, for it lies in mere fantasy. Topics: Love Is |
| Heart and head are the constituent parts of character; temperament has almost nothing to do with it, and, therefore, character is dependent upon education, and is susceptible of being corrected and improved. |
| Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life. |
| Love is three quarters curiosity. Topics: Love Is |
| I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel. |
| God ceases to be God only for those who can admit the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself the most severe punishment they can suffer. |
| The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with. |
| The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led. |
