To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.

Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.

But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.

Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.

Far less envy in America than in France.

The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.

Women prefer emotions to reasoning.