Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

A man who stops at nothing short of the law is very clever indeed!

The great secret of social alchemy is to profit best from each stage in our lives, to gather all its leaves in spring, all its flowers in summer, and all its fruits in autumn.

Today nobility is gone: there is only a peerage.

The day will dawn when Europe will believe only in the man who tramples her underfoot.

Passions are no more forgiving than human laws and they reason more justly. Are they not based on a conscience of their own, infallible as an instinct?