The key to all sciences is unquestionably the question mark. To the word How? we owe most of our greatest discoveries. Wisdom in life may perhaps consist in asking ourselves on all occasions: Why?

A beautiful book is a victory won in all the battlefields of human thought.

Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.

The prodigality of millionaires is comparable only to their greed of gain. Let some whim or passion seize them and money is of no account. In fact these Croesuses find whims and passions harder to come by than gold.

Men who pay their tailors never amount to anything, they never even become Cabinet ministers.

Coffee falls into the stomach... ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop... the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink...

Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.