The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority..

When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death..

As soon as man seeks to penetrate the secrets of Nature--in which nothing is secret and it is but a question of seeing--he realizes that the simple p….

A girl's coquetry is of the simplest, she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a woman's coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in ….

A sacrament by virtue of which each imparts nothing but vexations to the other..

Ah! the soft starlight of virgin eyes..

Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness..

The response man has the greatest difficulty in tolerating is pity, especially when he warrants it. Hatred is a tonic, it makes one live, it inspires….

Journalists grow accustomed to seeing evil and they let it pass; they proceed to approve it, and they end by committing it themselves..

Un mari, comme un gouvernement, ne doit jamais avouer de faute. A husband, like a government, never needs to admit a fault..

True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrar….

It's not enough to be a good person. You also have to show it..

The future of a nation lies in the hands of mothers..

In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there is a man, a father, a mother and a woman..

Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy..

Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, t….

According to man's environment, society has made as many different types of men as there are varieties in zoology. The differences between a soldier,….

I'm a great poet. I don't put my poems on paper: they consist of actions and feelings..

Inspiration is the opportunity of genius..

When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means where….

Thought is the only treasure that God sets outside all power and keeps to serve as a secret link among the unhappy..