Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.
A rent in your clothes is a mishap, a stain on them is a vice.
The woman you buy takes a great deal of money. The woman who gives herself to you takes all your money.
Let us leave the cure of public evils to those quacks, the statesmen.
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.
It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.