Chapter I: SHOULD advise any one who wishes to obtain a favour of a minister to

accost him with an air of melancholy rather than one of gaiety. We do not like to see others happier than ourselves.

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HE that is precisely midway between our enemy and ourselves seems to us nearer our enemy; this is but an effect of optical laws, like that by which the jet of a fountain seems less distant from the other side of the basin than from that where we are standing.

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IT was said of a man who was always conjuring up gloomy chimæras and saw only the dark side of everything: “He builds dungeons in Spain.”

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MADAME DE ROCHEFORT was asked if she were anxious to know the future. “No,” she replied, “it is too like the past.”

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THE new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natural teeth and legs of flesh and bone.

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BY learning the evil elements in nature we despise death, by learning those of society we despise life.

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SOCIETY would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.

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“IN the world,” remarked some one to me, “you have three kinds of friends: the friends who love you, the friends who do not trouble their heads about you, and the friends who hate you.”

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IT must be admitted that in order to live happy in the world there are sides to the soul which we must absolutely paralyse.

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MAN under present social conditions seems to me corrupted more by his reason than by his passions. His passions--I mean those that characterise the primitive man--have preserved for society the few natural elements it still possesses.

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SPEAKING generally, were society not an artificial structure, every simple and genuine feeling would not produce the great effect it does; it would give pleasure without surprise, but, as a matter of fact, it both surprises and pleases. Our surprise is a satire on society, our pleasure an act of homage to nature.

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OFTEN man lives by himself and he has need of virtue; he lives with others and he has need of honour.

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ARE you the friend of a gentleman about the Court, of a man of quality, as the saying is, and do you wish to inspire in him the warmest affection of which the human heart is capable? If so, do not confine yourself to lavishing on him the tenderest cares of friendship, to helping him out of his troubles, consoling him in affliction, consecrating your every moment to him, saving on occasion his life or his honour. Do not waste your time on such trifles; do more, do better--work out his genealogical tree.

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THERE is a wide-spread belief that the art of pleasing is a valuable means of making one’s fortune. But to know how to be bored is an art which gives far better results; indeed talent for making a fortune like that for succeeding with women, can almost be reduced to that art.

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THE great always sell their society to the vanity of the little.

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A PHILOSOPHER who had retired from the world wrote me a letter full of good advice and common sense. It concluded with these words: “Farewell, my friend; maintain if you can the interests that bind you to society, but cultivate the feelings that cut you away from it.”

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SUCH is the miserable condition of men, that they must needs seek consolation in society for the evils of nature, and in nature for the evils of society. How many have failed to find either in one or the other distraction from their troubles!

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M. ---- WAS reproached for his love of solitude. “You see,” he said, “I am more accustomed to my own failings than to those of other people.”

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WEAKNESS of character or lack of ideas, in a word all that can withhold us from living a solitary life, are things that preserve many a man from misanthropy.

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“WHY Madame de L. should be so anxious for me to visit her,” said a friend to me, “I do not know, for when some time has elapsed without my going I despise her less.” The same might be said of the world in general.

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