“She would have thought a woman would have died of shame. Instead of which, the shame died.”

For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.

If a woman hasn’t got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she’s a dry stick as a rule.

A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.

Be a good animal,true to your instincts.

Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing for long years.

I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts or my thoughts the result of my dreams.

There’s lots of good fish in the sea, maybe, but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you’re not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.

When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.

Man is a mistake. He must go.

Used to all kinds of society, she watched people as one reads the pages of a novel, with a certain disinterested amusement.

Be sure your sins will find you out, especially if you’re married and her name’s Bertha.

That’s how women are with me said Paul. They want me like mad but they don’t want to belong to me.

Money poisons you when you’ve got it, and starves you when you haven’t.

You love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And there I will die smothered.

Now go away then, and leave me alone. I don’t want any more of your meretricious persiflage.

They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. And he was in love with her.