* * * * * HOPE is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it. I would fain inscribe upon the gate of Paradise the line that Dante wrote upon that of Hell--“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.” * * * * * OUR reason sometimes makes us as unhappy as our passions, and in such a case one can say of a man that he is a patient poisoned by his physician. * * * * * IT is nature’s will that wise men have their illusions as well as fools, to the end that they be not made too unhappy by their own wisdom. * * * * * THAT tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible is a fine allegory. Is it not intended to signify that when one has penetrated to the depths of things, the consequent loss of illusions brings about the death of the soul--that is to say a complete detachment from all that moves and interests other men? * * * * * THE physical world appears the work of a good and mighty Being who has had to abandon the execution of part of his plan to a maleficent Being. But the moral world seems rather the production of a crazy fiend’s caprices. * * * * * WHEN I hear it argued that, taking everything into account, the least sensitive folk are the happiest, I remember the Indian proverb: “Better to be seated than standing, better to be lying than seated, but better than all else to be dead.” * * * * * LIVING is a disease from the pains of which sleep eases us every sixteen hours; sleep is but a palliative, death alone is the cure. * * * * * TIME diminishes for us the intensity of _absolute_ pleasures, to use the metaphysician’s term, but apparently it increases _relative_ pleasures; and I suspect that this is the artifice by which nature is able to attach men to life after the loss of the objects or pleasures which most rendered it agreeable. * * * * * SOME ONE described Providence as the baptismal name of chance; no doubt some pious person will retort that chance is the nickname of Providence. * * * * * M. ---- said to me, _à propos_ of his constant offences against digestion, and of the pleasures in which he indulged--the only obstacles to his regaining his health: “I should be marvellously well if it were not for myself.” * * * * * NATURE seems to make use of men for the accomplishment of her designs without concerning herself about her instruments, like tyrants who rid themselves of those who have been of service to them. * * * * *