Evasion is unworthy of us, and is always the intimate of equivocation.

The wounds of self-love turn incurable when the oxide of self-love gets into them.

A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.

Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

Rich men are resolved to be astonished at nothing. When they see a masterpiece, they must needs at one glance recognize some flaw to dispense them from admiration, a vulgar emotion.

There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier.