"In a family which for centuries had been incapable even of adding up their own expenditure and subtracting their own debts [the Prince] was the first (and last) to have a genuine bent for mathematics; this he had applied to astronomy ... in his mind, now, pride and mathematical analysis were so linked as to give him an illusion that the stars obeyed his calculations ..." p. 12

"The Prince put [a rose] under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer from the Opera." p.14

"Dying for somebody or for something, that was perfectly normal, of course: but the person dying should know, or at least feel sure, that someone knows for whom or for what he is dying ..." p. 15.

"...Tancredi could never do wrong in his uncle's eyes: so the real fault lay with the times, these confused times in which a young man of...