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.
Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.
The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.
Love is a game in which one always cheats.
Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.
Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.
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.
A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.
What is art? Nature concentrated.
Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
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.
Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.
The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.
The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance.
Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.
When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.
Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.