Only when one has learned to acknowledge that wiser minds have made better words to come out of our mouths may we truly, then, begin to speak them.

Life is simply what out feelings do to us.

In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become like women; their thoughts can revolve around the minor facts of life and penetrate their hidden meaning.

Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.

Nothing about me surprises me.

By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.