Honore de Balzac

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?

It's good to like yourself, and that only comes from hard work, from doing. But vanity is dangerous; it can trip you badly.