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.

The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world

A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth.

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

The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.

What is really beautiful must always be true.

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.