The only human beings I have thoroughly admired and respected in the world have been those who carried the load of the world with ...a smile, and who, in the face of anxieties that would have knocked me clean out, never showed a tremor. Such men and women end by owning us, soul and body, and our allegiance can never be shaken. We are only too glad to be owned. Religion is nothing but this.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A Carpaccio in Venice, la Berma in Phèdre, masterpieces of visual or theatrical art that the prestige surrounding them made so al...ive, that is so invisible, that, if I were to see a Carpaccio in a gallery of the Louvre or la Berma in some play of which I had never heard, I would not have felt the same delicious surprise at finally setting eyes on the unique and inconceivable object of so many thousands of my dreams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromw...ell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Remember, that when I speak of pleasures I always mean the elegant pleasures of a rational being, and not the brutal ones of a swi...ne. I mean la bonne chère, short of gluttony; wine, infinitely short of drunkenness; play, without the least gaming; and gallantry, without debauchery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a social respect necessary in company: you may start your own subject of conversation with modesty, taking care, however,... de ne jamais parler de cordes dans la maison d'un pendu.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,... An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I saw pale kings, and princes too, Pale warriors, death pale were they all;... They cried--"La belle dame sans merci Hath thee in thrall!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women who are devoted to causes, such as overpopulation and the underprivileged [sic], are much less interested in fashion than, l...et's say, those who lunch at La Grenouille and Le Cirque.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »