“Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.”

“Life is the art of being well-deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.”

“It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.”

“Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave.”

“We can depend on the world being a perpetual surprise in perpetual motion.”

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”