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

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”

“Even the most honorable of men know nothing of what love means to a woman. They feel pleasure, and that is their aim. A woman believes that love itself is her whole aim and pleasure merely one branch of a vast tree, deeply rooted in her heart. She believes it is her profound duty to care for this tree, nourish it each day, and give all of its fruits exclusively to one man and to her children. This in itself demands a sacrifice that men cannot comprehend.”

“She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.”

“He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.”

“Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong.”