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

Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.

It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.

In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.

On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.

Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.

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