“I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays it’s no good being a cabbage – unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.”

“The secret of success is sincerity.”

“Men should only believe half of what women say. But which half?”

“If you sing a song of peace with enough gestures and grimaces, it becomes a war song.”

“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

“Faithful women are all alike, they think only of their fidelity, never of their husbands.”

“Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.”

“I have been a woman for fifty years, and I've never yet been able to discover precisely what it is I am.”

“I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.”

“The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.”

“There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.”