I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.

The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.

Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth.

Only great minds can afford a simple style.

I used to think of deathlike I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.

At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.