Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.

And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads.

the object of a new year is not that we should have a new year, but rather that we should have a new soul.

A man must be orthodox upon most things, or he will never even have time to preach his own heresy.

Fairy tales are more than true.

The man who says, 'my country right or wrong' is like the man who says, 'my mother drunk or sober'