Art's greatest efforts are invariably a timid counterfeit of Nature.

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

Women are happy to possess a man whom all women covet.

Intuition, like the rays of the sun, acts only in an inflexibly straight line; it can guess right only on condition of never diverting its gaze; the freaks of chance disturb it.

If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.

Handsome widows, after a twelve-month, enjoy a latitude and longitude without limit.

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.