Loyalty in time of need is possibly one of the noblest of victories a courtier can win over himself.
A woman must be a genius to create a good husband.
Pure herring oil is the port wine of English cats.
To be happy, a man must love his wife as she chooses to be loved.
If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment – giving to that word its exact significance.
The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others – existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.
You may imitate, but never counterfeit.
Man judges of nature in relation to itself; the angelic spirit judges of it in relation to heaven. In short, to the spirits everything speaks.
Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.
The union of a want and a sentiment.
When there is an old maid in the house, a watchdog is unnecessary.
Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman.
When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.
Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
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.
Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!
Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
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.