How characteristic of your perverse heart that longs only for what happens to be out of reach.

I assure you that the world is not so amusing as we imagined.

I can see that you're in love, but only in a very narrow sense. It's the love of someone that finds charms and qualities in a woman that she doesn't actually have, who puts her in a class apart with every one else in second place, and who stays attached to her even while he's abusing her.

Marquise de Merteuil: I've distilled every thing to one single principle: win or die.

Don't you remember that love, like medicine, is only the art of encouraging nature?

Truth to tell, the longer I live, the more I'm tempted to think that the only moderately worthwhile people in the world are you and I.

When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.