For a woman to be at once a coquette and a bigot is more than the humblest of husbands can bear; she should mercifully choose between the two.

There are some extraordinary fathers, who seem, during the whole course of their lives, to be giving their children reasons for being consoled at their death.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

When a secret is revealed, it is the fault of the man who confided it.

There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it.

A good author, and one who writes carefully, often discovers that the expression of which he has been in search without being able to discover it, and which he has at last found, is that which was the most simple, the most natural, and which seems as if it ought to have presented itself at once, without effort, to the mind.