In times of death and famine, reason is on the side of the priests-who have their own kind of logic which cries for miracles and, on occasion, invents them.

There are truths which can kill a nation.

There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.

Countries are like fruit-the worms are always inside.

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.

Only the mediocre are always at their best.

Everyone, when there's war in the air, learns to live in a new element: falsehood.