As a rule, only the poor are generous. Rich people can always find excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relative.

Yes, I can understand that a man might go to a gambling table when he sees that all that lies between him and death is his last crown.

Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.

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

When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.