True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit.
Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal.
Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face.
The fashions we call English in Paris are French in London, and vice versa. Franco-British hostility vanishes when it comes to questions of words and clothing. God save the King is a tune composed by Lully for a chorus in a play by Racine.
Like hunger, physical love is a necessity. But man's appetite for amour is never so regular or so sustained as his appetite for the delights of the table.
When a woman starts talking about her duty, her regard for appearances, and her respect for religion, she raises so many bulwarks which she delights to see captured by storm.