Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.
The secret is not to betray your ignorance. Just maneuver, avoid the quicksands and obstacles, and the rest can be found in a dictionary.
Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.
In fact living is dying.
The only certainty is death.
We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain.
I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.
Ale, not beer, in a pewter mug was comme il faut, the only thing for a gentleman of letters, worthy of the name, to drink.
You must render: never report.
You’ll find that my coquetry is quite impartial, which allows me to keep my friends.
And taking her friend’s hand, she put it on her breast, on that firm round covering of a woman’s heart which the male often finds so satisfying that he makes no attempt to find what lies beneath it.
The kiss itself is immortal. It travels from lip to lip, century to century, from age to age. Men and women garner these kisses, offer them to others and then die in turn.
Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.
The bed comprehends our whole life, for we were born in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.
Abstinence is the worst form of perversion.
Those men, those of former times, had soul and eyes that in no way resemble ours, and in their veins, along with their blood, flowed something that has disappeared: love and admiration for the Beautiful.
The English have only three sauces – a white one, a brown one and a yellow one, and none of them have any flavor whatever.
Love always has its price, come whence it may.
One sometimes weeps over one’s illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.
Military men are the scourges of the world.
Legitimized love always despises its easygoing brother.