Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune.

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.

For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?

Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.

Gratitude is a fool's word; we find it in the dictionary, but it is not in the heart of man.

True lovers know how trifling a thing is money yet how difficult to blend with love!

The pleasures of love proceed successively from a distich to a quatrain, from a quatrain to a sonnet, from a sonnet to a ballad, from a ballad to an ode, from an ode to a cantata, and from a cantata to a dithyramb. A husband who begins with the dithyramb is a fool.