Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence - beginning with one's own.

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.

In correct theology, the Virgin ought not to be represented in bed, for she could not suffer like ordinary women, but her palace at Chartres is not much troubled by theology, and to her, as empress-mother, the pain of child-birth was a pleasure which she wanted her people to share.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everybody concerned in it, teachers and taught.