Love and work have the virtues of making a man pretty indifferent to anything else.

The habits of every animal are, at least in the eyes of man, constantly similar in all ages. But the habits, the clothes, the words and the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a bourgeois, a priest and a pauper, are wholly dissimilar and change at the will of civilizations.

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

The day will dawn when Europe will believe only in the man who tramples her underfoot.

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

The election of a deputy to the Legislature offers a noble and majestic spectacle comparable only to the delivery of a child. It involves the same efforts, the same impurities, the same laceration, and the same triumph.