Have you noticed that life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in newspapers?

What fun it would be to be poor, as long as one was excessively poor! Anything in excess is most exhilarating

An ugly sight, a man who is afraid.

With God, what is terrible is that one never knows whether it's not just a trick of the devil.

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.

Life is very nice, but it has no shape. The object of art is actually to give it some and to do it by every artifice possible-truer than the truth.

Everything ends this way in France — everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs — everything is a pretext for a good dinner.