A girl fresh from a boarding school may perhaps be a virgin but no! she is never chaste.

Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.

Conscience is a cudgel which all men pick up in order to thwack their neighbors instead of applying it to their own shoulders.

To have fame follow us is well, but it is not a desirable avant-courier.

It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.

A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.

Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.