The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.

It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

Sensuality is the death of the soul.

In Paris every man must have had a love affair. What woman wants something that no other woman ever wanted.

For young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds.

Most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great scientists submit religion to reason only to discover a problem as unsolvable as that of squaring a circle.

Any man, however blase or depraved, finds his love kindled anew when he sees himself threatened by a rival.