It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.

Jealousy, an eminently credulous and suspicious passion, allows fancy the greatest possible play. But it does not bestow wit, it banishes all sense.

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.

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

I believe in the incomprehensibility of God.

In France we can cauterize wounds but we do not yet know any remedy for the injuries inflicted by a bon mot.