Un être à demi stupide, mais attentif, mais prudent tous les jours, goûte très-souvent le plaisir de triompher des hommes à imagination. - Stendhal

Signs cannot be represented, in a spy’s report, so damningly as words.

Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.

The dinner was indifferent and the conversation irritating. "It's like the table of contents of a dull book," thought Julien. "All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance."