You men do not understand the delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand... but as for me, I swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep, strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place.

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

There are two men in me--one lives in the full sense of the word, the other reasons and passes judgment on the first. The first will perhaps take leave of you and the world forever in an hour now; and the second . . . the second?

I am like a mariner born and bred on board a buccaneer brig whose soul has become so inured to storm and strife that if cast ashore he would weary and languish no matter how alluring the shady groves and how bright the gentle sun.

We practically always excuse things when we understand them

O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!