Great Throughts Treasury

"When in doubt, I read Oscar Wilde."

"What everyone agreed was not very nice, was the way Clémence had carried on. Obviously, she wasn't the kind of girl you'd ask again: she'd ended up showing off everything she'd got, and she'd puked all down one of the muslin curtains and completely ruined it. At least the men did go into the street to do it; Lorilleux and Poisson, when they felt queer, managed to dash as far as the pork-butcher's shop. Breeding always tells."

"When a peasant begins to feel the need for instruction, he usually becomes fiercely calculating."

"When sometimes, behind his back, they called him a tyrant, he merely smiled and uttered this profound observation: If someday I turn liberal, they will say I have let them down."

"When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other."

"When lovers kiss on the cheeks, it is because they are searching, feeling for one another's lips. Lovers are made by a kiss."

"Why then should money be blamed for all the dirt and crimes it causes? For is love less filthy - love which creates life?"

"Yes, that's your idea, you all, the French workers unearth a treasure, for only then eat it in a corner of selfishness and laziness. You scream beautiful against the rich, you lack the courage to make the money to the poor fortune sends you ... You will never be worthy of happiness, as you will have something to you, and your hatred of bourgeois will only be your rabid bourgeois need for them."