Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.

Women are as they are; they necessarily have the defects of their virtues.

The monotony of provincial life attracts the attention of people to the kitchen. You do not dine as luxuriously in the provinces as in Paris, but you dine better, because the dishes serve you are the result of mediation and study.

Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

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.

The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.