As charity covers a multitude of sins before God, so does politeness before men.

Good-humor is allied to generosity, ill-humor to meanness.

Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.

Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body.

Discernment is a power of the understanding in which few excel. Is not that owing to its connection with impartiality and truth? for are not prejudice and partiality blind?

To divest one's self of some prejudices would be like taking off the skin to feel the better.

Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator.

Envy is but the smoke of low estate, Ascending still against the fortunate.

Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours.

What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more.

A lively and agreeable man has not only the merit of liveliness and agreeableness himself, but that also of awakening them in others.

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

Everybody acts like the future is so far away, when really every moment that passes is the future.

this blue shirt i have is practically the same color as my jeans, and looking all-blue is something only cookie monster can pull off.

Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all.

My exile was not only a physical one, motivated exclusively by political reasons; it was also a moral, social, ideological and sexual exile.

There is no fair wind for one who knows not whither he is bound.

Gratitude unifies the mind of man with the intelligence of substance, so that man's thoughts are received by the formless.

Minds that have nothing to confer Find little to perceive.

Everybody is two beings: one lives and flourishes in the daylight and stands guard. The other being walks and howls at night.