When our desires are fulfilled, we never fail to realize the wealth of imagination and the paucity of reality.

Never tell a loved one of an infidelity: you would be badly rewarded for your troubles. Although one dislikes being deceived, one likes even less to be undeceived.

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful.

If a man needs a religion to conduct himself properly in this world, it is a sign that he has either a limited mind or a corrupt heart.

A woman should not take a lover without the consent of her heart, nor a husband without the consent of her reason.

Novelty is the storehouse of pleasure.

Glances are the first billets-doux of love.

The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience.

Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.

Men lose more conquests by their own awkwardness than by any virtue in the woman.

It is not enough to be wise, one must be engaging.

Eventually everything appears to disappear from the life. That's it.

We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.

He who has got more than that is required to fulfill his basic need spends his resources, more often than not, on the people and the products that he does not actually need.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and, in particular, not in the least proletarian.

I have some memories of certain things that happened in high school when I was stoned out of my mind, but I talked with other people about them, and I trusted the aggregated memories.

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

I won't eat anything I can't spell or wouldn't tread in.

He leaned closer to me and then seemed shocked as he realized what he was doing. "Why would you do that? Why would you do that for me?

Well, if I am a man, a man I must become.

Benevolence, like religion, awes even those it cannot win.