What patient can trust the knowledge of a physician without reputation or furniture, in a period when publicity is all-powerful and when the government gilds the lamp posts on the Place de la Concorde in order to dazzle the poor?

Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.

No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.

Every moment of happiness requires a great amount of Ignorance

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.