“Signs cannot be represented, in a spy’s report, so damningly as words.”

Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.

On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.

Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

When you want to court a woman, court her sister first

War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon’s proclamations.

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.

A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.

An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.

Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. There are no age limits for love.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.

It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one’s generation.

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.