There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scales the fall of an empire of fourteen years and the dropping of a woman's glove, and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire.

When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army

There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.

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

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.

In Paris, the greatest expression of personal satisfaction known to man is the smirk on the face of a male, highly pleased with himself as he leaves the boudoir of a lady.

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.