Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.

Vanity and dignity are incompatible with each other; vain women are almost sure to be vulnerable.

In love matters; keep your pen from paper.

Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind.

Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest