Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
God is the author, men are only the players. These grand pieces which are played upon earth have been composed in heaven.
Who shall ever tell how much an unmerited disfavor crushes a shy person? Who can ever depict the misfortunes of timidity?
One can imagine the look the two lovers exchanged; it was like a flame, for virtuous lovers have not a shred of hypocrisy.
Man's condition is horrible because, no matter what form his happiness may take, it arises from some species of ignorance.
Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man
If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.
Un mari, comme un gouvernement, ne doit jamais avouer de faute. A husband, like a government, never needs to admit a fault.
A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
Woman is closer to angels than man because she knows how to mingle an infinite tenderness with the most absolute compassion.
The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.
The woman who is about to deceive her husband always carefully thinks out how she is going to act, but she is never logical.
Your modest savant smiles as he says to his admirers: What have I done? Nothing. Man does not invent a force, he directs it.
Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
Despotism accomplishes great things illegally; liberty doesn't even go to the trouble of accomplishing small things legally.
Squeeze marriage as much as you like, you will never extract anything from it but fun for bachelors and boredom for husbands.
Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect.
Conscience is a cudgel which all men pick up in order to thwack their neighbors instead of applying it to their own shoulders.
When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.
A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.
From the manner in which a woman draws her thread at every stitch of her needlework, any other woman can surmise her thoughts.
He's got his dog trained so that it only does it on newspapers. The trouble is it does it when he's reading the blasted things.
The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.
A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers.
A man wastes his time going to hear some of our eloquent modern preachers; they may change his opinions, but never his conduct.
Glory and fame mean twelve thousand francs' worth of paid articles in the newspapers and five thousand crowns' worth of dinners.
A year at the breast is quite enough; children who are suckled longer are said to grow stupid, and I am all for popular sayings.
The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
Foppery, being the chronic condition of women, is not so much noticed as it is when it breaks out on the person of the male bird.
Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.
A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.
It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.
Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
Prostitution and robbery are two living protests, respectively female and male, made by the natural state against the social state.
Women? In order to realize how far these charming creatures we idealize can carry their cruelty, we must see them among themselves!
La femme marie e est un esclave qu'il faut savoir mettre sur un tro" n e. A married woman is a slave whom one must put on a throne.
Most women wish to feel that their spirit has been violated. Do they not, indeed, flatter themselves on never yielding save to force?
Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.
No woman has ever existed who did not know perfectly well in her heart what to expect from the superiority or inferiority of a rival.
Your women of fashion ceases to be a woman. She is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex on the brain.
A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.
Journalists grow accustomed to seeing evil and they let it pass; they proceed to approve it, and they end by committing it themselves.
Generally our confidences move downward rather than upward; in our secret affairs, we employ our inferiors much more than our bettors.
Nature endows woman alternately with a particular strength which helps her to suffer and a weakness which counsels her to be resigned.
Yes, I can understand that a man might go to a gambling table when he sees that all that lies between him and death is his last crown.
Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.
The man whom fate employs to awaken love in the heart of a young girl is often unaware of his work and therefore leaves it uncompleted.
Does not any limit imposed upon one inspire a desire to go beyond it? Does not our keenest suffering arise when our free will is crossed?
Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.
The innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.
The happier a man, the more apt he is to tremble. In hearts exclusively tender, anxiety and jealousy are in exact proportion to happiness.