Oh, no, no, permit me," said all three of us at the same time.
The clerk himself uttered a monosyllable of disapproval.
"Yes, I know," he said, shouting louder than all of us; "you are talking of what is believed to exist, and I am talking of what is.

Every man feels what you call love toward each pretty woman he sees, and very little toward his wife.

That is the origin of the proverb,--and it is a true one,--'Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood."' "Ah, but what you say is terrible! There certainly exists among human beings this feeling which is called love, and which lasts, not for months and years, but for life." "No, that does not exist.

Even if it should be admitted that Menelaus had preferred Helen all his life, Helen would have preferred Paris; and so it has been, is, and will be eternally.

And it cannot be otherwise, just as it cannot happen that, in a load of chick-peas, two peas marked with a special sign should fall side by side.