Today nobility is gone: there is only a peerage.

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

During the great storms of our lives we imitate those captains who jettison their weightiest cargo.

I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings.

Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims.

A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.

Necessity is often the spur to genius.