My husband's personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. On the very night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often said jokingly to me: 'Well, have you already picked out a lover?' I blushed with shame. 'Don't deceive me,' he added on one occasion, 'that would seem ugly to me, but pick out an attractive lover, or preferably several. You are a splendid woman, but still half a child, and you need toys.

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

Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason.

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.

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.

Every man--I know this--turns weak, pliant, ridiculous as soon as he's in love.