''A nobleman who is wicked is by nature a monster.''
''I feed on good soup, not beautiful language.''
''Most people die from the remedy rather than from the illness.''
''There's nothing quite like tobacco: it's the passion of decent folk, and whoever lives without tobacco doesn't deserve to live.''
''The ancients, sir, are the ancients, and we are the people of today.''
''We live under a prince who is an enemy to fraud, a prince whose eyes penetrate into the heart, and whom all the art of impostors can't deceive.''
''Laurent, lock up my hair shirt and lacerating whip.''
''Human weakness is to desire to know what one does not want to know.''
''What the devil was he doing in that galley?''
''Age brings about everything; but it is not the time, Madam, as we know, to be a prude at twenty.''
''Bring us the mirror, you ignorant thing, and be sure not to sully the image by the transmission of your reflection!''
''If you make yourself understood, you're always speaking well.''
''I have the knack of easing scruples.''
''I believe that two and two are four and that four and four are eight.''
''Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.''
''Perfect reason flees all extremity, and leads one to be wise with sobriety.''
''Show some mercy to this chair which has stretched out its arms to you for so long; please satisfy its desire to embrace you!''
''It may cost me twenty thousand francs; but for twenty thousand francs, I will have the right to rail against the iniquity of humanity, and to devote to it my eternal hatred.''
''He's a wonderful talker, who has the art of telling you nothing in a great harangue.''
''I have a heart to love all the world; and like Alexander I wish there were yet other worlds, so I could carry even further my amorous conquests.''
''No matter what everybody says, ultimately these things can harm us only by the way we react to them.''
''... that great blindness which we are all under in respect to our own selves.''
''She can't stand nudity in a picture, but she has a mighty love for it in the flesh.''
''As the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I see no reason why anyone should be exempt.''
''When there is enough to eat for eight, there is plenty for ten.''
''All the satires of the stage should be viewed without discomfort. They are public mirrors, where we are never to admit that we see ourselves; one admits to a fault when one is scandalized by its censure.''
''No matter what Aristotle and the Philosophers say, nothing is equal to tobacco; it's the passion of the well-bred, and he who lives without tobacco lives a life not worth living.''
''We die only once, and it's for such a long time!''
''They were more chaste in their ears than in the rest of their bodies.''
''I give it to you for the love of humanity.''
''In order to prove a friend to one's guests, frugality must reign in one's meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat.''
''The absence of the beloved, short though it may last, always lasts too long.''
''Ah! how annoying that the law doesn't allow a woman to change husbands just as one does shirts.''
''This is not how nature speaks.''
''You think you can marry for your own pleasure, friend?''
''I saw it, I tell you, with my own eyes I saw it, what you call "saw it"!''
''It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.''
''I want to be distinguished from the rest; to tell the truth, a friend to all mankind is not a friend for me.''
''When you model yourself on people, you should try to resemble their good sides.''
''Grammar, which rules even kings ...''
''He who follows his lessons tastes a profound peace, and looks upon everybody as a bunch of manure.''
''They [zealots] would have everybody be as blind as themselves: to them, to be clear-sighted is libertinism.''
''I always write a good first line, but I have trouble in writing the others.''
''One easily bears moral reproof, but never mockery.''
''It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous for its prey.''
''Cover that bosom, which I cannot bear to see.''
''A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool.''
''For more than forty years I've been speaking in prose without even knowing it!''
''Birth means nothing where there is no virtue.''
''Public scandal is what makes the offense; sinning in private is not sinning at all.''
''Isn't the greatest rule of all the rules simply to please?''
''People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything.''
''Sharing with Jupiter is never a dishonor.''
''Frankly, it's good enough to lock up in a drawer.''
''Esteem must be founded on preference: to hold everyone in high esteem is to esteem nothing.''
''I hate all men, the ones because they are mean and vicious, and the others for being complaisant with the vicious ones.''
''It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.''
''Solitude terrifies the soul at twenty.''
''Love is a great master. It teaches us to be what we never were.''
''Ah! devout though I may be, I am no less a man!''
''Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason.''
''New-born desires, after all, have inexplicable charms, and all the pleasure of love is in variety.''
''He must have killed a lot of people to be so rich.''
''What, sir, you are also a heretic in medicine?''
''It is fine for a woman to know a lot; but I don't want her to have this shocking desire to be learned for learnedness sake. When I ask a woman a question, I like her to pretend to ignore what she really knows.''
''What a terrible thing to be a great lord, yet a wicked man.''
''Reason is not what decides love.''
''Time has nothing to do with the matter.''
''One can be well-bred and write bad poetry''
''To marry a fool is to be no fool.''
''Books and marriage go ill together.''
''The secret to fencing consists in two things: to give and to not receive.''
''One should eat to live, not live to eat.''
''Outside of Paris, there is no hope for the cultured.''
''She is a prude in her own defence ... under the specious mask of propriety, she conceals the decay of her worn-out charms.''
''Assassination's the fastest way.''
''One ought to look a good deal at oneself before thinking of condemning others.''
''I want people to be sincere; a man of honor shouldn't speak a single word that doesn't come straight from his heart.''
''I prefer a pleasant vice to an annoying virtue.''
''I have the fault of being a little more sincere than is proper.''
''Two wives? That exceeds the custom.''
''All which is not prose is verse; and all which is not verse is prose.''
''In society one needs a flexible virtue; too much goodness can be blamable.''
''People don't mind being mean; but they never want to be ridiculous.''
''It's still better to be married than dead.''
