Modern reformers offer nebulous theories or write philanthropic novels. But your thief acts! He is as clear as a fact and as logical as a punch on the nose! And what a style he has!

If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

Lofty souls are always inclined to make a virtue of misfortune.

One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.

Let us leave the cure of public evils to those quacks, the statesmen.

There is neither vice nor virtue, there are only circumstances.