Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.

Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.

When one has no particular talent for anything, one takes to the pen.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.

Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.

Rare is the man who suffers no remorse as he passes from the state of confidant to that of rival.