Chapter I: ASKED M. N---- why he had ceased to go into society. “Because,” he

replied, “I no longer love the women and I know the men.”

* * * * *

SOCIETY, what people call the world, 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!

* * * * *

WHAT makes the success of many books consists in the affinity there is between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and those of the public.

* * * * *

THE majority of the books of our time give one the impression of having been manufactured in a day out of books read the day before.

* * * * *

THERE are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.

* * * * *

IT is when their age of passions is past that great men produce their masterpieces, just as it is after volcanic eruptions that the soil is most fertile.

* * * * *

THE tragic drama has the great moral drawback of attaching too high an importance to life and death.

* * * * *

SPERON-SPERONI admirably explains how it is that an author who, in his own opinion, delivers himself clearly, is sometimes obscure to his reader. “It is because,” he says, “the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, the reader from the expression to the thought.”

* * * * *

A MAN is not clever simply because he has many ideas, just as he is not necessarily a good general because he has many soldiers.

* * * * *

A POETASTER asked Chamfort’s opinion on a couplet. “Excellent,” he said, “were it not for its length.”

* * * * *

SOME one has said that to plagiarise from the ancients is to play the pirate beyond the Equator, but that to steal from the moderns is to pick pockets at street corners.

* * * * *

AN interesting work might be compiled which would point out all the noxious ideas concerning the human spirit, society and morality, to be found argued or implicit in the most celebrated writings and the most highly revered authors; ideas which propagate religious superstition, evil political principles, despotism, class pride and popular prejudices of every kind. Such a work would demonstrate that nearly all books corrupt, and that the best do almost as much harm as good.

* * * * *

THERE are two classes of moralists and political writers; those who have only seen human nature on its detestable or absurd side, and they form the greater number: Lucian, Montaigne, Labruyère, Larochefoucauld, Swift, Mandeville, Helvetius, &c.; those who have only seen it on its finer side and in its perfection like Shaftesbury and some others. The first know nothing of the palace, the pig-sties of which are all that they have seen; the second are enthusiasts, who turn their eyes far from all that offends them, but that, none the less, exists. _Est in medio verum._

* * * * *

PHYSICAL scourges and the calamities of human nature rendered society necessary. Society has added to natural misfortunes. The drawbacks of society have made government necessary, and government adds to society’s misfortunes. There is the history of human nature in a nutshell.

* * * * *

MEN’S ideas are like cards and other games. Ideas which I remember to have seen regarded as dangerous and over-bold have since become commonplace and almost trite, and have descended to men little worthy of them. So it is that some of the ideas which to-day we call audacious will be considered feeble and conventional by our descendants.

* * * * *

IT has been observed that writers on physics, natural history, physiology, and chemistry, are, as a rule, men of mild, equable temperament and happy; whilst, on the contrary, writers on politics, law, and even ethics, are of a sad and melancholy cast of mind. Nothing can be more simple: the former study nature, the latter society, the former contemplate the work of the supreme Being, the latter confine their gaze to the work of men. The respective results must needs be diverse.

* * * * *

SAID a witty misanthrope to me _à propos_ of the iniquities of men, “It is only the uselessness of the first Deluge that preserves us from being visited by a second.”

* * * * *

THERE are periods when public opinion is the worst of opinions.

* * * * *

THE majority of our social institutions seem to have as object the maintenance of man in a mediocrity of ideas and emotions, which renders him best fitted to govern or be governed.

* * * * *

THERE is no man who can be by himself alone so contemptible as a body of men, and there is no body of men that can be so contemptible as the public at large.

* * * * *

IT may be argued that every public idea, every accepted convention, is a piece of stupidity, for has it not commended itself to the greatest number?

* * * * *

THE public is governed as it reasons. It is its right to say foolish things, as it is that of the ministers to do them.

* * * * *

A CERTAIN witty advocate remarked: “One would risk being disgusted if one saw politics, justice, and one’s dinner in the making.”

* * * * *

’TIS easier to make certain things legal than to make them legitimate.

* * * * *

EXPERIENCE which enlightens private persons corrupts princes and officials.

* * * * *

HAD any one told Adam, on the day following the death of Abel, that some centuries later there would be places where, in an enclosure of twelve square miles, seven or eight hundred thousand people would be concentrated, piled one upon another, do you imagine he would have believed it possible that such multitudes could ever live together? Would he not have conceived an idea of the crimes and monstrosities that would be committed under such conditions much more terrible than the reality has proved? This is a point we ought to bear in mind, as a consolation for the drawbacks of these extraordinary assemblages of human beings.

* * * * *

WERE a historian like Tacitus to write a history of the best of our kings, giving an exact account of all the tyrannical acts and abuses of authority, the majority of which lie buried in the profoundest obscurity, there would be few reigns which would not inspire us with the same horror as that of Tiberius.

* * * * *

OFTEN in early youth an opinion or custom seems absurd to us, which, with advancing years, we discover has some justification and so appears less absurd. Ought we to conclude from this that certain customs are not so ridiculous as others? One might sometimes be tempted to think that they were established by people who had read the book of life through, and that they are judged by those who, despite their intelligence, have only glanced at a few pages.

* * * * *

LIKE animals that cannot breathe at a certain altitude without perishing, the slave dies in the atmosphere of freedom.

* * * * *

IT is unfortunate for men, fortunate perhaps for tyrants, that the poor and unhappy have not the instinct or pride of the elephant which does not reproduce itself in servitude.

* * * * *

THERE is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.

* * * * *

WILL it be believed that despotism has its partizans on the ground of the necessity for encouraging the fine arts? The brilliancy of the reign of Louis XIV. has to an incredible extent multiplied the number of those who think thus. According to them the crowning glory of all human society is to have fine tragedies, fine comedies and other works of art. There are those who willingly forgive all the evil wrought by priests, since without the priests we should not have had the comedy of _Tartuffe_.

* * * * *

WHAT is a cardinal? He is a priest clad in scarlet, who receives a hundred thousand crowns from the king, to flout him in the name of the pope.

* * * * *

SOCIETY is composed of two great classes--those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.

* * * * *

CHANGE in fashion is the tax which the industry of the poor levies on the vanity of the rich.

* * * * *

IT is an incontestable fact that there are in France seven million folk who beg for alms, and another twelve millions who are too poor to give them.

* * * * *

THE nobility, say the nobles, is an intermediary between the king and the people.... Precisely; just as the hound is the intermediary between the huntsman and the hares.

* * * * *

FRANCE is a country where it is often useful to exhibit one’s vices, and invariably dangerous to exhibit one’s virtues.

* * * * *

A FRIEND said to me _à propos_ of some ridiculous ministerial blunders: “If it were not for the government, we should have nothing left to laugh at in France.”

* * * * *

IN France we leave unmolested those who set fire to the house and persecute those who sound the alarm bell.

* * * * *

PARIS is a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four fifths of the inhabitants die of grief.

* * * * *

WHEN princes condescend to emerge from their miserable systems of etiquette it is never in favour of a man of merit, but of a wench or a buffoon. When women forget themselves it is never for love of an honest man but of a rascal. In short when people break the yoke of public opinion, it is rarely to rise above it, nearly always to descend below it.

* * * * *

ONE must make choice between loving women and knowing them; there is no middle course.

* * * * *

NATURALISTS tell us that in all animal species degeneration begins in the female. In civilised society philosophers can apply this observation to morals.

* * * * *

APPARENTLY nature, in giving man an absolutely irradicable taste for women, must have foreseen that, without this precaution, the contempt inspired by the vices of their sex, vanity in particular, would be a great obstacle to the maintenance and propagation of the human species.

* * * * *

A MAN who professed to esteem women highly was asked if he had enjoyed the favours of many. “Not so many as if I had despised them,” he said.

* * * * *

WHATEVER evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.

* * * * *

YOUNG women have a misfortune which they share with kings, that of having no friends; but happily they feel this misfortune as little as the kings: the latter’s pomp and the former’s vanity spare both that emotion.

* * * * *

MADAME DE MONTMORIN said to her son: “You are going into society: I have only one piece of advice to give you, and that is to be in love with all the women.”

* * * * *

A WITTY woman told me one day what may well be the secret of her sex: it is that every woman in choosing a lover takes more account of the way in which other women regard the man than of her own.

* * * * *

THE woman who esteems herself more for her gifts of soul or intelligence than for her beauty is above her sex. She who esteems herself more for her beauty than for her intelligence or soul is of her sex. But she who esteems herself more for her birth or rank than for her beauty is outside her sex, beneath it.

* * * * *

MADAME DE TALMONT, seeing M. de Richelieu neglecting her to pay attentions to Madame de Brionne, a very beautiful woman, but said to be rather stupid, remarked to him: “You are not blind, Marshall, but I cannot help thinking you a little deaf.”

* * * * *

MADEMOISELLE DUTHÉ having lost a lover, and the affair causing some talk, a man who called to see her found her playing the harp, and said with surprise: “Good heavens! I was expecting to find you desolated with grief.” “Ah,” she exclaimed in a pathetic tone, “you ought to have seen me yesterday!”

* * * * *

A WOMAN was at a performance of the tragedy of _Mérope_, and did not weep: surprise was expressed. “I could cry my eyes out,” she said, “but I have to go out to supper to-night.”

* * * * *

A YOUNG man was advised to ask a woman of forty, with whom he had been head over ears in love, to return his letters. “I don’t suppose she has them any longer,” he said. “Oh yes,” was the reply, “about the age of thirty women begin to keep their love letters.”

* * * * *

“HE who has not seen much of _demi-mondaines_ does not understand women at all,” gravely remarked to me a fond admirer of his own wife, who was unfaithful to him.

* * * * *