“A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.”

It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.

The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.

The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.

The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.

People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.

Perhaps men who cannot love passionately are those who feel the effect of beauty most keenly; at any rate this is the strongest impression women can make on them.

Women prefer emotions to reasoning.

It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.

Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth.

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 Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.

The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.

I see but one rule: to be clear.

Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.

The more things we do together, talk about together, work together on, the closer we become and the more we rely on each other. I feel like our relationship is very close and continues to grow closer every year as we grow older together.

Im not averse to helping Wall Street when it helps Main Street.

It’s only pain, it will not hurt you.

The main aim of the [political] dialogue should be to resolve the problems of the nation, not to find who is the winner and who is the loser.

The main human problems often are that we misidentify what will make us happy; and we ask people and things to save us beyond their ability.

At home and abroad I have repeatedly been asked what are the main essentials of a successful prime minister.

Honestly, I haven’t the time to read contemporary writers. I know this is awful, but in the main it is true.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.