Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.

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

In France we can cauterize wounds but we do not yet know any remedy for the injuries inflicted by a bon mot.

Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy.

If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.

Your women of fashion ceases to be a woman. She is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex on the brain.

To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself, will always be the text of the life of woman.