We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

The wounds of self-love turn incurable when the oxide of self-love gets into them.

The victory always has a lot of parents but the defeat is always an orphan.

Bankers are lynxes. To expect any gratitude from them is equivalent to attempting to move the wolves of the Ukraine to pity in the middle of winter.

No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.

The habits of every animal are, at least in the eyes of man, constantly similar in all ages. But the habits, the clothes, the words and the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a bourgeois, a priest and a pauper, are wholly dissimilar and change at the will of civilizations.

One hour of love has a whole life in it.