The spirit of a nation is what counts-the look in its eyes.

Water is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing; it sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.

Death is the next step after the pension-it's perpetual retirement without pay.

I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.

To make ourselves invisible to creditors or to the envious, and even to our own worries, we can take advantage here on earth of a great democratic institution-in fact, democracy's only success-the night.

Death holds no horrors. It is simply the ultimate horror of life.

The man who discovers a woman's weakness is like the huntsman in the heat of the day who finds a cool spring. He wallows in it.