A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.

By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.

A man may and ought to pride himself more on his will than on his talent.

Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.

Temperament is the thermometer of character.

When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death.