“Adorable ambuscades of providence!”

“What happened between those two beings? Nothing. They were adoring one another.”

“You are adorable, mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.”

“With a remainder of that brotherly compassion which is never totally absent from the heart of a drinker, Phoebus rolled Jehan with his foot onto one of those poor man's pillows which Providence provides on all the street corners of Paris and which the rich disdainfully refer to as heaps of garbage.”

“Above all, you can believe in Providence in either of two ways, either as thirst believes in the orange, or as the ass believes in the whip.”

“Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil.”

“It is sad to tell, but after having tried society, which had caused his misfortune, he tried Providence which created society, and condemned it also.”