So,” Wanda cried, “a woman in furs is nothing more than a large cat, a charged electric battery?

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.

Until then I had lived as I had painted and versified - that is, I never got far beyond priming canvas, beyond penning an outline, a first act, a first stanza. There are simply people who start all sorts of things and yet never finish any of them. And that was the kind of person I was.

Every woman has the instinct, the propensity to profit from her charms, and there's a lot to be said for giving oneself without love, without pleasure.

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.

A real apple is more beautiful than a painted one, and a live woman is more beautiful than a Venus of stone.