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?

You have corrupted my imagination and inflamed my blood.

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

The person who doesn't know how to subjugate will all too quickly feel the other's foot on the nape of his neck.

You cannot deny that love lasts for only a brief moment, uniting two beings as a single being that is capable of only one thought, one sensation, one will.

Despite all the progress of civilization, women have remained exactly as they emerged from the hand of Nature.

People who want to live like Olympian gods must have slaves whom they throw into their fishponds and gladiators who fight during their masters sumptuous banquets-and the pleasure-seekers never care if some blood splatters on them.