We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

We should nourish our souls on the dew of Poesy, and manure them as well.

Don't laugh at youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.

What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?

Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world will let them.

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.