“Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.”

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

Hope is a memory that desires, the memory is a memory that has enjoyed.

Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.

Women are ever the dupes or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness.

A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.

At fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist: a woman is all promise.

There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.

Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.

How natural it is to destroy what we cannot possess, to deny what we do not understand, and to insult what we envy!

The man who enters his wife’s dressing room is either a philosopher or a fool.

Law is a silvery web that lets the big flies pass and catches all the small ones.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another’s happiness than in your own.

Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.

As soon as we are born, we are old enough to die.

I am hopelessly a lover and a dreamer and that will be the death of me.

You should not overlook the guidelines of your culture. Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you.

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consultation for death.

Man dies constantly until the moment of his demise.

Despite all expectations, the time of my last campaign and of my passing is near. I wish to die at home. Let not my end disarm you, and on no account weep for me, lest the enemy be warned of my death.

With Heaven’s aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world. That task is left for you.