Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
-
Marriage, as practised by high society, is arranged indecency.
-
It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates hiking because he dislikes walking in thick forest on a dark night.
-
What we love intensely or for a long time we are likely to bring within the citadel, and to assert as part of oneself.
-
We need to be just before we are generous, as we need shirts before ruffles.
-
Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.
-
Stupidity would not be absolute stupidity did it not fear intelligence.
-
Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
-
An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.
-
Society is divided into two classes, the shearers and the shorn.
-
Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.
-
Love is the exchange of two fantasies and the contact of two skins.
-
Society ... is nothing more than the war of a thousand petty opposed interests, an eternal strife of all the vanities, which, turn in turn wounded and humiliated one by the other, intercross, come into collision, and on the morrow expiate the triumph of the eve in the bitterness of defeat. To live alone, to remain unjostled in this miserable struggle, where for a moment one draws the eyes of the spectators, to be crushed a moment later -- this is what is called being a nonentity, having no existence. Poor humanity!
-
A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead.
-
A good number of works owe their success to the mediocrity of their authors' ideas, which match the mediocrity of those of the general public.
-
Woman's weakness, not man's merit, oftenest gains the suitor's victory.
-
Do not suppose opportunity will knock twice at your door.
-
If a woman were about to proceed to her execution, she would demand a little time to perfect her toilet.
-
To enjoy and give enjoyment, without injury to yourself or others; this is true morality.
-
Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.
-
Contemptuous people are sure to be contemptible.
-
Public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
-
How many fools does it take to make up a public?
-
What one knows best is ... what one has learned not from books but as a result of books, through the reflections to which they have given rise.
-
Be my brother or I will kill you.