“In the first woman we love, we love everything. Growing older, we love the woman only.”

“No one ought even to desert a woman after throwing her a heap of gold in her distress! He ought to love her forever! You are young, only twenty-one, and kind and upright and fine. You'll ask me how a woman can take money from a man. Oh, God, isn't it natural to share everything with the one we owe all our happiness to? When one has given everything, how can one quibble about a mere portion of it? Money is important only when feeling has ceased. Isn't one bound for life? How can you foresee separation when you think someone loves you? When a man swears eternal love--how can there be any separate concerns in that case?”

“Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!”

“for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea”

“Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane”

“Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God”

“I yield to your wishes. It is the privilege of the women whom we love more than they love us to make the men who love them ignore the ordinary rules of common-sense.”