Women have much more heart and much more imagination than men; hence, fancy often allures them.

The most effective coquetry is innocence.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

God has placed the genius of women in their hearts, because the works of this genius are always works of love.

Argument should be polite as well as logical.

Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)