“A beautiful woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanour. All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.”

“In love there are no friends everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open.”

“Nobody knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.”

“One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.”

“There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees, and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes.”

“It was all over with him. Marius loved a woman. His destiny was entering upon the unknown. ”

“A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.”