Only a woman of the world is a woman; the rest are females.

Antiquity was perhaps created to provide professors with their bread and butter.

Time cures one of everything-even of living.

Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead; therein lies the whole art of pleasing. Everybody knows it, and everyone forgets it.

A sign of the times: there are no longer any chairs in the bookshops along the embankments. [Noël] France was the last bookseller who provided chairs where you could sit down and chat and waste a little time between sales. Nowadays books are bought standing. A request for a book and the naming of the price: that is the sort of transaction to which the all-devouring activity of modern trade has reduced bookselling, which used to be a matter for dawdling, idling, and chatty, friendly browsing.

History is a novel which did take place; a novel is history that could take place.

Only a woman of the world is a woman; the rest are females.