The Short Reign of Pippin IV

I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it.

The human fetus is born upside down. But it is not true that a child becomes upright after birth. Observe the feet of children and young people when they are at rest. The feet are nearly always higher than the head, No matter how hard he may try, the growing boy, and particularly girl, cannot keep the feet down. The fetal position is very strong. It takes eighteen to twenty years for the feet finally to accept the ground as their normal home. It is my hypothesis that you can judge maturity exactly by the relationship of the feet to the ground.

I don't anticipate trouble and so I anticipate trouble.

You are a good man, Sire, and a good man draws women as cheese draws mice.

It is a matter of disillusion to young male Americans otherwise informed, to discover that the French are a moral people — judged, that is, by American country-club standards.

It is the misfortune of men to want to do a thing well, even a thing they do not want to do at all.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps fear of a loss of power.

The one thing our species is helpless against is good fortune. It first puzzles, then frightens, then angers, and finally destroys us.