Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.

The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.

The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.

The first characteristic of Rossini's music is speed - a speed which removes from the soul all the sombre emotions that are so powerfully evoked within us by the slow strains in Mozart. I find also in Rossini a cool freshness, which, measure by measure, makes us smile with delight.

When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

Why not make an end of it all?... My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings.... What is death?... A very small matter,when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.