Physically, a man is a man for a much longer time than a woman is a woman.

During the great storms of our lives we imitate those captains who jettison their weightiest cargo.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.

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

Thanks to the toleration preached by the encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, the sorcerer is exempt from torture.

What makes friendship indissolute and what doubles its charms is a feeling we find lacking in love: I mean certitude.

Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.