Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.

Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.

Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.

A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!

Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation.