It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
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.
Love is a game in which one always cheats.
Love is the poetry of the senses.
Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better.
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
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.
Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.
A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.