I have no desire to make windows into mens souls

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

There is nothing more uncommon than common sense.

Your reputation is in the hands of others. That's what the reputation is. You can't control that. The only thing you can control is your character.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

Man's sensitivity to the little things and insensitivity to the greatest are the signs of a strange disorder.

Better beggar woman and single than Queen and married.

He who conquers others is strong; he who conquers himself is mighty.

I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.

When you learn, teach, when you get, give.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

A proverb is much matter distilled into few words.

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

The first thing you'll have to do, is the last thing you wished.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Fine clothes may disguise, but silly words will disclose a fool.

The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.

Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.