The pleasures of love proceed successively from a distich to a quatrain, from a quatrain to a sonnet, from a sonnet to a ballad, from a ballad to an ode, from an ode to a cantata, and from a cantata to a dithyramb. A husband who begins with the dithyramb is a fool.

Love endows us with a sort of personal religion; we respect another live within ourselves.

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!

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

A great love is a credit opened in favor of a power so consuming that the moment of bankruptcy must inevitably occur.

When chaste people need body or mind to resort to action or thought, they find steel in their muscles or knowledge in their intelligence. Theirs the diabolic vigor or the black magic of will power.

Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles.