The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

The present is the only reality and the only certainty.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

I believe a person of any fine feeling scarcely ever sees a new face without a sensation akin to a shock, for the reason that it presents a new and surprising combination of unedifying elements.

Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?