The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.

Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women. It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

Life is too short to learn German

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.