He who best knows the world will love it least.

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

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.

What saves the virtue of many a woman is that protecting god, the impossible.

A man wastes his time going to hear some of our eloquent modern preachers; they may change his opinions, but never his conduct.

Our happiness often depends upon social hypocrisies to which we will never stoop.

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.