There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.

Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. 'To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law.'

The mass believes that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the café.

Civilization is nothing more than the effort to reduce the use of force to the last resort.

In our rather stupid time, hunting is belittled and misunderstood, many refusing to see it for the vital vacation from the human condition that it is, or to acknowledge that the hunter does not hunt in order to kill; on the contrary, he kills in order to have hunted.

We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies.

The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted.