Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.

Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.

Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.

Emulation admires and strives to imitate great actions; envy is only moved to malice.

Let nothing dupe you! Such is the horrible maxim that acts as a solvent upon every noble feeling man experiences.

Nothing is irredeemably ugly but sin.

Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.