One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.

We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.

Stupidity assumes two forms, it speaks or is silent. Mute stupidity is bearable.

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

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.

Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.