"If much reason is necessary to remain in celibacy, still more is required to marry. One must then have reason for two; and often all the reason of the two does not make one reasonable being."
"Nothing proves better the necessity of an indissoluble marriage than the instability of passion."
"A woman, when she has passed forty, becomes an illegible scrawl; only an old woman is capable of divining old women."
"In love, one must not attack a place unless one storms it."
"Everything is two-faced — even virtue."
"A lover is never wrong."
"Bachelors are the freebooters of marriage."
"When a woman pronounces the name of a man but twice a day, there may be some doubt as to the nature of her sentiments; but three times! ..."
"Love is the union of a want and a sentiment."
"A woman full of faith in the one she loves is but a novelist's fancy."
"In this advanced century, a girl of sixteen knows as much as her mother, and enjoys her knowledge much more."
"Time is a great physician: he brings us death."
"Woman is a charming creature who changes her heart as easily as her gloves."
"Love is the poetry of the senses."
"Marriage should combat without respite or mercy that monster which devours everything — habit."
"One is never criminal in obeying the voice of Nature."
"A woman is a well-served table, that one sees with different eyes before and after the meal."
"Convictions that remain silent are neither sincere nor profound."
"To speak of love is to make love."
"It costs more to satisfy a vice than to feed a family."
"In this world, one must put cloaks on all truths, even the nicest."
"The mistakes of woman result almost always from her faith in the good, and her confidence in the truth."
"Catastrophes dispose all strong and intelligent men to philosophize."
"A woman at middle age retains nothing of the pettiness of youth; she is a friend who gives you all the feminine delicacies, who displays all the graces, all the prepossessions which Nature has given to woman to please man, but who no longer sells these qualities. She is hateful or lovable, according to her pretensions to youth, whether they exist under the epidermis or whether they are dead."
"Woman is a creature between man and the angels."