It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.

Of all the passions, the only one that seems respectable to me is the passion for food

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.

The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favor. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist, the more likely your success.

'Tis done. We have become a nation.

Even if one succeeds in making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, there remains the problem of what to do with a one-eared sow.

My ex-girlfriend was very sexy. She reminded me of the Sphinx because she was very mysterious and eternal and solid...and her nose was shot off by French soldiers.

By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.

What's crazy is living your life according to some book written by someone who couldn't imagine what your life would be like.

Birds and the people who love freedom have something common: They must fly freely to feel that they are alive!

Be fond of the man who jests at his scars, if you like; but never believe he is being on the level with you.

If you learn from an experience, that's good - so nothing bad happened to you.