"Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught."

"I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race."

"A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears."

"Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window."

"But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite."

"First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time."

"A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity."

"The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman."

"The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition."

"When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues."

"Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness."

"Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart."

"Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves."

"Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society."

"Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps."

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."

"For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth."

"Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy."

"Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love."

"It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time."

"There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile."

"A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea."

"The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human."

"Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling."

"Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul."

"We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are."

"If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life."

"It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment."

"Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue."

"All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual."

"Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside."

"The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital."

"At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman."

"Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!"

"Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty."

"Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies."

"Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin."

"Love is the poetry of the senses."

"Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love."

"The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance."

"The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other."

"The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris."

"Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God."

"Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself."

"A man is a poor creature compared to a woman."

"In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls."

"A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists."

"Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings."

"To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure."

"The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness."