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.