“To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.”

People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.

Perhaps men who cannot love passionately are those who feel the effect of beauty most keenly; at any rate this is the strongest impression women can make on them.

Women prefer emotions to reasoning.

It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.

Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth.

Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.

The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.

I see but one rule: to be clear.

Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.

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.

Her absence was poison to my eyes.

Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.

Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.

I’d rather miss you in your absence then neglect in your presence.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

It’s not the absence of fear. It’s overcoming it. Sometimes you’ve got to blast through and have faith.

Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the ability to act effectively, in spite of fear.