Emulation is not rivalry. Emulation is the child of ambition; rivalry is the unlovable daughter of envy.

To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, it is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.

In painting, you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no-one can deal with it.

Old men are prone to invest the futures of young men with their own past sorrows.

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

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.

One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.