A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers.

Life is simply what out feelings do to us.

It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

Envy is the most stupid of vices, for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.

The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.

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

The monotony of provincial life attracts the attention of people to the kitchen. You do not dine as luxuriously in the provinces as in Paris, but you dine better, because the dishes serve you are the result of mediation and study.