Manners are the hypocrisy of nations. - Honoré de Balzac

Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.

A man ought not to marry without having studied anatomy, and dissected at least one woman.

Les hivers sont pour les femmes à la mode ce que fut jadis une campagne pour les militaires de l’empire.