I have met a thousand scamps; but I never met one who considered himself so. Self-knowledge isn't so common.

A pipe is a pocket philosopher,--a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it.

Woman already controls by not seeming to do so. Talk no more of her rights.

Hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.

Love, the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it [Christianity] degraded into the mere mechanical action of reproduction.

We only see clearly when we have reached the depths of woe.

Count art by gold, and it fetters the feet it once winged.