Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through man's passions, nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.

You know how to paint pleasure, cruelty, arrogance in glowing colors.

If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs; then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.

My heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.

Why become well-versed in science and the arts if not to impress a lovely little woman?

You modern men, you children of reason, cannot begin to appreciate love as pure bliss and divine serenity.

Alas, woman is faithful as long as she loves, but you demand that she be faithful without love and give herself without enjoyment. Who is cruel then, woman or man?