There is no describing the feeling of being mistreated by a successful rival in front of the woman you worship.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.