Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.

Let us leave the cure of public evils to those quacks, the statesmen.

One of the glories of society is to have created woman where Nature had made only a female; to have created a continuity of desire where Nature thought only of perpetuating the species; and, in fine, to have invented love.

Does not any limit imposed upon one inspire a desire to go beyond it? Does not our keenest suffering arise when our free will is crossed?

A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other.

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.

The mind, too, has its regimen. It needs gymnastics, just like the body does.