Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshnessof a lake. There is no character in women's faces before the age of thirty.

Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.

What a thing of fantasy a woman may become after dusk.

Men are perfectly willing to abandon a woman but they refuse to be abandoned by her.