If the people have no bread, let them eat cake.

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Let them eat cake. On being told that her people had no bread. Attributed to Marie-Antoinette, but remark is much older. Rousseau refers in his Confessions, 1740, to a similar remark, as a well-known saying. Others attribute the remark to the wife of Louis XIV.

No one understands my ills, nor the terror that fills my breast, who does not know the heart of a mother.

Tribulation first makes one realize what one is.

Let them eat cake.

it is the nature of human beings, and especially of the mediocre ones, to wish to change everything. They desire it all the more because they know popularity will accrue rather to those who disturb than to those who maintain order.

There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.