Music is of two kinds: one petty, poor, second-rate, never varying, its base the hundred or so phrasings which all musicians understand, a babbling which is more or less pleasant, the life that most composers live.

The winter's frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth.

A man who stops at nothing short of the law is very clever indeed!

Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to force?

What saves the virtue of many a woman is that protecting god, the impossible.

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy--a vice which yields no return?

No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.