“What a woman says to an eager lover, write it on running water, write it on air.”

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill bred it is!

Every one has his faults: but we do not see the wallet on our own backs.

It is difficult to lay aside a confirmed passion.

The vows that woman makes to her fond lover are only fit to be written on air or on the swiftly passing stream.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love. Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus

I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony.

It is difficult to suddenly give up a long love. Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem

Give up wanting to deserve any thanks from anyone, or thinking anybody can be grateful.

Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then a thousand more.

Now Spring restores the balmy heat, now Zephyr’s sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial sky.

I hate and I love, and who can tell me why?

So a maiden, whilst she remains untouched, so long is she dear to her own; when she has lost her chaste flower with sullied body, she remains neither lovely to boys nor dear to girls.

For the godly poet must be chaste himself, but there is no need for his verses to be so.

Who now travels that dark path from whose bourne they say no one returns. [Lat., Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illue unde negant redire quemquam.]

I write of youth, of love, and have access by these to sing of cleanly wantonness.

But you shall not escape my iambics.

There was a certain moment. I was about 61 – two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying – “I don’t wanna do it. The part’s too small.” And he sent it back to me, he said, “You shouldn’t read the lover. You should read the father.

The world’s a mean place. It’s unfair, then it’s fair. It’s hateful, then it’s loving. It’s a very peculiar place on philosophical and metaphysical and religious levels.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

The idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus is a bunch of bullshit. Treat her like you would a friend, and you’ll wind up with a lover.

Lovers are made by a kiss.

It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.

A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.

Animal lover that I am, a cougar I am not.