Our first and last love is self-love.

False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.

The scope of an intellect is not to be measured with a tape-string, or a character deciphered from the shape or length of a nose.

It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.

The lively and mercurial are as open books, with the leaves turned down at the notable passages. Their souls sit at the windows of their eyes, seeing and to be seen.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

She couldn't tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to her bed.

Rakkim would have loved to believed that… another reason he wasn't convinced.

Sometimes a citizenry should not simply "be good". You have to leave space for dissent, real dissent.

A team that has character doesn't need stimulation.

Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle.

I study chess eight hours a day, on principle.

No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.

The nunneries of silent nooks, the murmured longing of the wood.

It may be that the very qualities that help people get ahead are the ones that make them ill-suited for managing crises. It's hard to prepare for the worst when you think you're the best.

Life may be miraculous in its unlikelihood in the universe, but it would be a fallacy to suggest that its rareness makes it inextinguishable.