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.

Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

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

By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.