"'Why do you do that?' said the glow-worm.
"'Why do you shine?' said the frog."
"Calumny is the homage of our contemporaries, as some South Sea Islanders spit on those they honor."
"Hived bees get sugar because they will give back honey. All existence is a series of equivalents."
"'Men are always like Horace,' said the Princess. 'They admire rural life, but they remain, for all that, with Augustus.'"
"If the Venus de Medici could be animated into life, women would only remark that her waist was large."
The brilliant Frenchwomen whose very names seem to sparkle as we write them, yet of whose wit so little has been preserved, had an especial facility for condensed cynicism.
Think of Madame du Deffand, sceptical, sarcastic; feared and hated even in her blind old age for her scathing criticisms. When the celebrated work of Helvetius appeared he was blamed in her presence for having made selfishness the great motive of human action.
"Bah!" said she, "he has only revealed every one's secret."