Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.

Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.

Society is no more indulgent than was the God of Genesis.

Equality may be the law, but no human power can install it.

A woman filled with faith in the one she loves is the creation of a novelist's imagination.

For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?

Virginity, like all monstrosities, possesses special riches and its own absorbing grandeur. Among the chaste, life forces are economized and thus gain in resistance and durability.