The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
What is really beautiful must always be true.
One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.
Every true passion thinks only of itself.
I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.