The genitals themselves have not undergone the development of the rest of the human form in the direction of beauty.

Life as we find it is too hard for us ... We cannot do without palliative remedies. There are perhaps three of these means: powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to care little about our misery; substitutive gratifications, which lessen it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensitive to it.

It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an afterlife; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me.

Intolerance of groups is often, strangely enough, exhibited more strongly against small differences than against fundamental ones.

Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one feel more at home.

In the small matters trust the mind; in the large ones the heart.

Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill.

Thought is action in rehearsal.