One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought.

It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.

When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.

Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.

Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words.