19 quotes
The minds whose mission is to destroy prejudices are precisely those who have the most prejudices and profess them most blindly.
When you want to drain the marsh, you don't consult the frogs.
To love one who loves you, to admire one who admires you, to be the idol of your idol! ... It is too much, it exceeds human happiness, it is stealing fire from heaven!
La Croix de Berny (1855)
Business is other people's money.
Good taste is the modestly of the mind; that is why it cannot be either imitated or acquired.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
Love with men is not a sentiment, but an idea.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
Infidelity, like death, admits of no degrees.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
It has been said that society is for the happy, the rich; we should rather say the happy have no need of it.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
O, how true it is there can be no tête-à-tête where vanity reigns!
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
Treasures are not for youth; at twenty years one does not know how to be rich, or to be loved.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
It is not easy to be a widow: one must reassume all the modesty of girlhood, without being allowed to even feign its ignorance.
Attributed A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1902)
There is only one proper way to wear a beautiful dress: to forget you are wearing it.
Attributed
Our instinct inspires us, — warns us, our intelligence scents out what our reason docs not discover, for instinct is the nose of the mind.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
We are only vulnerable and ridiculous through our pretensions.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
Self-interest, that leprosy of the age, attacks us from infancy, and we are startled to observe little heads calculate before knowing how to reflect.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
I do not believe in virtue, but I do believe in innocence. They are very different. Innocence is ignorance.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
Hope, alas! is our waking dream.
Attributed Treasury of Thought (1881)
A woman's life can be divided thus: the age when she dances but does not dare to waltz — it is the spring; the age when she dances and dares to waltz — it is summer; the age when she dances but prefers to waltz — it is autumn; finally, when she dances no longer — it is winter, that rigorous winter of life.
Attributed A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1902)
For ages happiness has been represented as a huge precious stone, impossible to find, which people seek for hopelessly. It is not so — happiness is a mosaic, composed of a thousand little stones, which, separately and of themselves, have little value, but which, united with art form a graceful design. Set the mosaic carefully, and you have a beautiful ornament; learn to understand intelligently the passing enjoyments which chance, which your character gives you, or which Heaven sends you, and you have an agreeable existence. Why always look to the horizon when there are such fine roses in the garden you live in?
Attributed