After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.

Friendship has its illusions no less than love.

It's like a duel, he said laughing to himself -- my master-at-arms says there's a parry to every thrust, but that the good Lord, who desires an end, so orders it that one of the two forgets to parry.

There is nothing so beautiful, lovable and moving as the English countryside.

Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.

A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.

It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.

Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.

Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.

Love is a well from which we can drink only as much as we have put in, and the stars that shine from it are only our eyes looking in.

There is no such thing as natural law: this expression is nothing but old nonsense... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.

Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.

Jean Jacques Rousseauis nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.

Perhaps men who cannot love passionately are those who feel the effect of beauty most keenly; at any rate this is the strongest impression women can make on them.

But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.

One of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.

This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all as the most egregiousof sins.... It is one step away from protestantism.

Why not make an end of it all?... My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings.... What is death?... A very small matter,when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.

For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?

Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought.

I have a bad memory for facts.