No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.

In a world of hunchbacks, a fine figure becomes a monstrosity.

What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?

Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring.

Nothing is unimportant to a man plunged in despair. He is as credulous as a criminal sentenced to death who listens to a lunatic raving to him about how he can escape through the keyhole.

Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.

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