“The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.”

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride.

God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.

Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.

In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.

If you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.

Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.

But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.

People happy in love have an air of intensity.

This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.

Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?

Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.

I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.

Our true passions are selfish.

A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he.