Virginity, like all monstrosities, possesses special riches and its own absorbing grandeur. Among the chaste, life forces are economized and thus gain in resistance and durability.

The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.

Many men nourish a pride which urges them to conceal their struggles and show themselves only as conquerors.

Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned.

Six weeks with a fever is an eternity.

One can imagine the look the two lovers exchanged; it was like a flame, for virtuous lovers have not a shred of hypocrisy.