Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.

A fool who has a flash of wit creates astonishment and scandal, like hack-horses setting out to gallop.

Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.

There aren't many benefactors who don't say, like Satan: All these things will I give you if you bow down and worship me.

Satire is the disease of art.

It is among uneducated women that we may look for the most confirmed gossips. Goethe tells us there is nothing more frightful than bustling ignorance.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.