A man may and ought to pride himself more on his will than on his talent.

It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

Resignation is a daily suicide.

To have fame follow us is well, but it is not a desirable avant-courier.

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

In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become like women; their thoughts can revolve around the minor facts of life and penetrate their hidden meaning.

Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives to other lives and other tempers, as woman's destiny requires, have for the most part a mania for making everything about them bend to them.