Everyone should study at least enough philosophy and belles-lettres to make his sexual experience more delectable.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

No-thinking is the door. No-word is the gate. No-mind is the way.

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his judgment.

The missing aren't missing, they're only departed

Enough of this guilt, " he told her, his voice reduced to a cracked whisper. "What's done is done.

Passions unguided are for the most part mere madness.

The man who does things makes mistakes, but he doesn't make the biggest mistake of all-doing nothing.

Don't wrench your shoulder out of its socket trying to pat yourself on the back," Beldin said sourly.

It's one of the old show business axioms. No matter how successful you've been, there's always a younger and sexier seal coming along.

Longing performs all things

I was a 21-year-old kid back then and I had my whole career in front of me. We were so close to reaching the World Cup and then we all woke up the next morning to realize our dreams had been dashed.