There are as many mediocrities exalted through pity as masters decried through envy.
Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.
Misfortune, no less than happiness, inspires us to dream.
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.
In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Religious ecstasy is a madness of thought freed of its bodily bonds, whereas in the ecstasy of love, the forces of twin natures unite, blend and embrace one another.