Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, it is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.

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.

Thought is the only treasure that God sets outside all power and keeps to serve as a secret link among the unhappy.

In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted.

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.