He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

He who does not understand a joke, he does not understand Danish.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.