Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God

All men can bear a familiar, definite misfortune better than the cruel alternations of a fate which, from one moment to another, brings excessive joy or sorrow.

A Creole woman is like a child, she wants to possess everything immediately; like a child, she would set fire to a house in order to fry an egg. In her languor, she thinks of nothing; when passionately aroused, she thinks of any act possible or impossible.

Prostitution and robbery are two living protests, respectively female and male, made by the natural state against the social state.

Grief ennobles the commonest people because it has its own essential grandeur. To shine with the luster of grief, a person need only be sincere.

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

No navigator has yet traced lines of latitude and longitude on the conjugal sea.