A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the second or even the third rank.

This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition.

There is no duty more indispensible than that of returning a kindness.

Thrift is of great revenue.

Friendship is not to be sought for its wages, but because its revenue consists entirely in the love which it implies.

Life is short, but art lives forever.