The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done.

The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.

The union of a want and a sentiment.

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.

Man's condition is horrible because, no matter what form his happiness may take, it arises from some species of ignorance.