When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive anything—not even our virtues.
When women are secretly to blame they often show ostensibly the utmost womanly pride. It is a dissimulation of mind for which we ought to be obliged to them. The deception is full of dignity, if not of grandeur.
When there is an old maid in a house, watch-dogs are unnecessary; not the slightest event can occur that she does not see and comment upon and pursue to its utmost consequences.
When she plays, an actress can live no life of her own; she can neither dress, nor eat, nor talk.
When people are ill, they have such strange fancies! They are like children, they do not know what they want.
When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.
When babes begin to see, they smile; when a young girl first perceives the sentiment of nature, she smiles as she smiled when an infant. If light is the first love of life, is not love a light to the heart?
When a human soul draws its first furrow straight, the rest will follow surely.
What woman wants pity? A man’s sternness is to us our only pardon.
What is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood?
What is life but a machine set in motion by money? Know this for certain—methods are always confounded with results; you will never succeed in separating the soul from the senses, spirit from matter.
What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?