Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.

A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.

Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.

The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.

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.

People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.

War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon's proclamations.