There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.

It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

The first thing necessary to win the heart of a woman is opportunity.

True love rules especially through memory.

Neither the passions not justice nor politics nor the great social forces ever consider the victims they strike.

Creole women take after Europe in their intelligence, after the Tropics in the illogical violence of their passions, and after the Indies in the apathetic indolence with which they commit or suffer good and evil.

For businessmen, the world is a bale of banknotes in circulation; for most young men, it is a woman; for some women, it is a man; and for others it may be a salon, a coterie, a part of town or a whole city.