A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.
There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.
Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.
The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.
If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.
It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.
As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
Veiling truth in mystery.
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
True friendship multiplies the good in life and divides its evils. Strive to have friends, for life without friends is like life on a desert island... to find one real friend in a lifetime is good fortune to keep him is a blessing.
Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.
Our actions seem to have their lucky and unlucky stars, to which a great part of that blame and that commendation is due which is given to the actions themselves.
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.
Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.
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