Jealousy, an eminently credulous and suspicious passion, allows fancy the greatest possible play. But it does not bestow wit, it banishes all sense.

To say to a rich man: You are poor! is to tell the Archbishop of Granada that his sermons are worthless.

No woman allows her lover to descend from his pedestal. Even a god is not forgiven the slightest pettiness.

Many of us marvel at the icy insensitivity with which women snuff out their armours. But if they did not blot out the past in this manner, life for them would lose all dignity and they could never resist the fatal familiarities to which they once submitted.

When she lives at his palace, the maiden niece of a bishop can pass for a respectable woman because, if she has a love affair, she is obliged to hoodwink her uncle.

Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.

To lese-majeste and contempt of court, we must add the crime of lese-million, that fearful indignity we visit on the rich when we expose the impotence of gold.