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| A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like a hack-horse setting out to gallop. | 1 |
| A man of intellect without energy added to it is a failure. | 2 |
| All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate. | 3 |
| Calumny is like the wasp which worries you; which it were best not to try to get rid of, unless you are sure of slaying it, for otherwise it will return to the charge more furious than ever. | 4 |
| Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people whom we don’t know, and who don’t know us. | 5 |
| Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent. | 6 |
| Change of fashions is the tax which industry imposes on the vanity of the rich. | 7 |
| Covetousness is a sort of mental gluttony, not confined to money, but greedy of honour and feeding on selfishness. | 8 |
| Egotism is the tongue of vanity. | 9 |
| False modesty is the most decent of all falsehood. | 10 |
| Happiness is matter of opinion, of fancy, in fact, but it must amount to conviction, else it is nothing. | 11 |
| “I go at last out of this world, where the heart must either petrify or break.” At his last moments. | 12 |
| If you live among men, the heart must either break or turn to brass. | 13 |
| In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned. | 14 |
| It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous. | 15 |
| Knowledge is boundless; human capacity limited. | 16 |
| Le bonheur n’est pas chose aisée; il est trèsdifficile de le trouver en nous, et impossible de le trouver ailleurs—Happiness is no easy matter; it is very hard to find it within ourselves, and impossible to find it elsewhere. | 17 |
| Le hazard est un sobriquet de la Providence—Chance is a nickname for Providence. | 18 |
| Le public! combien faut-il de sots pour faire un public?—The public! How many fools must there be to make a public? | 19 |
| Love is more pleasing than marriage, because romances are more amusing than history. | 20 |
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| Obscurity and Innocence, twin-sisters, escape temptations which would pierce their gossamer armour in contact with the world. | 21 |
| Of all days, the one that is most wasted is that on which one has not laughed. | 22 |
| Peu de philosophie mène à méspriser l’érudition; beaucoup de philosophie mène à l’estimer—A little philosophy leads men to despise learning; a great deal leads them to esteem it. | 23 |
| Pleasure can be supported by illusion; but happiness rests upon truth. | 24 |
| Pride adds to a man’s stature; vanity only puffs him out. | 25 |
| Pride is lofty, calm, immovable; vanity is uncertain, capricious, and unjust. | 26 |
| Pride is the source of a thousand virtues; vanity is that of nearly all vices and all perversities. | 27 |
| Real worth requires no interpreter; its everyday deeds form its blazonry. | 28 |
| Ruins are mile-stones on the road of time. | 29 |
| Secrecy is best taught by commencing with ourselves. | 30 |
| Society is composed of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners. | 31 |
| Success makes success, as money makes money. | 32 |
| That man has advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity. | 33 |
| The author is often obscure to readers because, as has been said, he proceeds from the thought to the expression, whereas they proceed from the expression to the thought. | 34 |
| The man of intellect is lost unless he unites energy of character to intellect. When we have the lantern of Diogenes we must have his staff. | 35 |
| The success of many works is found in the relation between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and that of the ideas of the public. | 36 |
| There are more fools than wise men, and even in the wise men more folly than wisdom. | 37 |
| There are some trifles well habited, as there are some fools well clothed. | 38 |
| There is a kind of pride in which are included all the commandments of God, and a kind of vanity which contains the seven mortal sins. | 39 |
| Too elevated qualities often unfit a man for society. | 40 |
| Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death. | 41 |
| We gild our medicines with sweets; why not clothe truth and morals in pleasant garments as well? | 42 |
| Whoso is not a misanthropist at forty can never have loved his kind. | 43 |
| Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love. | 44 |
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