It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.

The endless legacy of the past to the present is the secret source of human genius.

A woman in love has full intelligence of her power; the more virtuous she is, the more effective her coquetry.

Nothing is irredeemably ugly but sin.

Passions are no more forgiving than human laws and they reason more justly. Are they not based on a conscience of their own, infallible as an instinct?