As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.

In Paris, when certain people see you ready to set your foot in the stirrup, some pull your coat-tails, others loosen the buckle of the strap that you may fall and crack your skull; one wrenches off your horse's shoes, another steals your whip, and the least treacherous of them all is the man whom you see coming to fire his pistol at you point blank.

I should like one of these days to be so well known, so popular, so celebrated, so famous, that it would permit me . . . to break wind in society, and society would think it a most natural thing.

My writing table has seen all my wretchedness, knows all my plans, has overheard all my thoughts.

Everybody all over the world takes a wife's estimate into account in forming an opinion of a man.