Love knows no virtue, no profit; it loves and forgives and suffers everything, because it must. It is not our judgment that leads us; it is neither the advantages nor the faults which we discover, that make us abandon ourselves, or that repel us. It is a sweet, soft, enigmatic power that drives us on. We cease to think, to feel, to will; we let ourselves be carried away by it, and ask not whither?

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.

It is merely the egoism of the man, who wants to bury a woman like a treasure. All attempts at using vows, contracts, and holy ceremonies have failed to bring permanence into the most changeable aspect of changeable human existence, namely love.

A slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. It makes you understand very quickly.

Venus in Furs has caught his soul in the red snares of hair. He will paint her, and go mad.

The struggle of the spirit against the senses is the gospel of modern man. I do not wish to have any part in it.

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