THERE is no need to regard Burrhus as an absolutely virtuous man; he is only so, contrasted with Narcissus. Seneca and Burrhus are the honest men of an age in which there are none. * * * * * IN order to sum up in a single word the rarity of honest folk, a friend remarked to me that in society the honest man is a variety of the human species. * * * * * I USED to know a misanthrope who in his good-humoured moments would say: “I should not be at all surprised if there were an honest man hidden away in some corner without any one knowing of him.” * * * * * THE thrifty man is the richest, the miser the poorest of men. * * * * * AN empty headed fellow who has a passing flash of wit astonishes and scandalises one as does a cab horse at a gallop. * * * * * I SHOULD advise any one who wishes to obtain a favour of a minister to accost him with an air of melancholy rather than one of gaiety. We do not like to see others happier than ourselves. * * * * * HE that is precisely midway between our enemy and ourselves seems to us nearer our enemy; this is but an effect of optical laws, like that by which the jet of a fountain seems less distant from the other side of the basin than from that where we are standing. * * * * * IT was said of a man who was always conjuring up gloomy chimæras and saw only the dark side of everything: “He builds dungeons in Spain.” * * * * * MADAME DE ROCHEFORT was asked if she were anxious to know the future. “No,” she replied, “it is too like the past.” * * * * * THE new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natural teeth and legs of flesh and bone. * * * * * BY learning the evil elements in nature we despise death, by learning those of society we despise life. * * * * * SOCIETY would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another. * * * * * “IN the world,” remarked some one to me, “you have three kinds of friends: the friends who love you, the friends who do not trouble their heads about you, and the friends who hate you.” * * * * * IT must be admitted that in order to live happy in the world there are sides to the soul which we must absolutely paralyse. * * * * * MAN under present social conditions seems to me corrupted more by his reason than by his passions. His passions--I mean those that characterise the primitive man--have preserved for society the few natural elements it still possesses.