When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

It is a luxury to be understood.

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.