“There is nothing so clever as people you agree with.”

16 February 1868
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Clever men will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness; every authority rouses their ridicule, every superstition amuses them, every convention moves them to contradiction. Only force finds favor in their eyes, and they have no toleration for anything that is not purely natural and spontaneous. And yet ten clever men are not worth one man of talent, nor ten men of talent worth one man of genius. And in the individual, feeling is more than cleverness, reason is worth as much as feeling, and conscience has it over reason. If, then, the clever man is not mockable, he may at least be neither loved, nor considered, nor esteemed. He may make himself feared, it is true, and force others to respect his independence; but this negative advantage, which is the result of a negative superiority, brings no happiness with it. Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Source: You Don't Know Me

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Eyes of the Overworld (1966), Chapter 3, "The Mountains of Magnatz"

Source: Little Foxes (1865), Ch. 4.

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Book One, Part II “The Warrior”, Chapter 2 (p. 49)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

As quoted by Warren Buffett, in an interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974)

Ce qui nous donne tant d’aigreur contre ceux qui nous font des finesses, c’est qu’ils croient être plus habiles que nous.
Maxim 350.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)