Life has but one true attraction: the attraction of play. But if we care not whether we win or lose?
IX
Nations have great men only in spite of themselves— like families. They make every effort not to have them. Therefore, the great man must, in order to exist, possess an offensive force greater than the power of resistance developed by millions of individuals.
Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we might say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.
X
There are tortoise-shell hides against which scorn is no longer a vengeance.
Many friends, many gloves.[1] Those who have admired me were despised, I might even say were despicable, if I sought to flatter honest men.
Girardin talk Latin! Pecudesque locutae.
He belongs to an infidel Society to send Robert Houdin to the Arabs to convert them from the miracles.