collections are amusing only in the making; afterwards they are like sporting prints without the sport. The sons of collectors inherit only the corpse of their fathers' satisfied passion.

that sunlight of the dead which is called literature.

One should make one's life a mosaic. Let the general design be good, the colors lively, and the materials diversified.

those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.

The affairs of the royal house form a subject of conversation for those who, as a rule, would have no conversation.

marriage was a calamity, but it was not an occupation.

history ... a sort of immortality turned upside down. Her life stretched backwards through ten centuries.