The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse - as a luxury befitting a young man.

I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.

Jean Jacques Rousseauis nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.

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