Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.

Society is no more indulgent than was the God of Genesis.

In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted.

How can we explain the perpetuity of envy--a vice which yields no return?

In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become like women; their thoughts can revolve around the minor facts of life and penetrate their hidden meaning.

One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.