"Then you succeed perfectly in being what you wish! Don't you know, monsieur, that to set yourself against conventionalities is like talking too loud?--an impertinence and an under-breeding that society resents by exclusion."
"Yes, I know it. But a duke may bawl, and nobody shuts out _him_; a prince might hop on one leg, and everybody would begin to hop too. Now, what the ducal lungs and the princely legs might do with impunity, I declare I've a right to do, if I like."
"_Bécasse_! no one can declare his rights till he can do much more, and--purchase them. Have a million, and we may perhaps give you a little license to be unlike other persons: without the million it is an ill-bred _gaucherie_."
"Ah, I know! Only a nobleman may be original; a poor penniless wretch upon town must be humbly and insignificantly commonplace. What a pity for the success of the aristocratic monopolists that nature puts clever fellows and fools just in the reverse order! But then nature's a shocking socialist."
"Hush, madame. Pray don't destroy me with such a whisper."
Talent wears well; genius wears itself out; talent drives a brougham in fact, genius a sun-chariot in fancy; talent keeps to earth and fattens there, genius soars to the empyrean, to get picked by every kite that flies; talent is the part and the venison, genius the seltzer and souffle of life. The man who has talent sails successfully on the top of the wave; the man with genius beats himself to pieces, fifty to one, on the first rock he meets.
One innocent may be wrongly suspected until he is made the thing that the libel called him.
Men shut out happiness from their schemes for the world's happiness. They might as well try to bring flowers to bloom without the sun.
The most dastardly sin on earth is the desertion of the fallen.
Let the world abandon you, but to yourself be true.
The bread of bitterness is the food on which men grow to their fullest stature.
Youth without faith is a day without sun.
I detest posterity--every king hates his heir.
Scandals are like dandelion seeds; they are arrow-headed and stick when they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold.
The puff perfect is the puff personal--adroitly masked.
I wear the Bonnet Rouge discreetly weighed down with a fine tassel of British prudence.