She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her

The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

One may live tranquilly in a dungeon; but does life consist in living quietly?

To live is not breathing it is action.

The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

The French painter Rousseau was once asked why he put a naked woman on a red sofa in the middle of his jungle pictures. He answered, 'I needed a bit of red there.'