love affair will interest even a very old woman, just as the account
of a race will always interest an old jockey. Habit, you see!

* * *

The friendship of women for women is very often less based on love, or
even sympathy, than on little indiscreet confidences which they may have
made to one another.

* * *

In order that love may be lasting, it must be closely allied with tried
friendship. One cannot replace the other, but so long as both march
abreast, living together, a man and a woman can find life delicious.

* * *

It is not matrimony that kills love, but the way in which many people
live in the state of matrimony. It may be affirmed, however, that only
intelligent diplomatists (alas! the select few!) can make love last long
in matrimonial life.

* * *

Women who suggest to the mind notes of interrogation are more
interesting than those, too perfect, who only suggest notes of
admiration.

* * *

Constant reproaches do not kill love so quickly and so surely as
constant reminders of what one has done to deserve gratitude. Why?
Simply because Cupid loves freedom, and lives on it. To ask for love as
a debt of gratitude is like forcing it, and the failure is fatal.

* * *

Women are all actresses. What makes actresses so fascinating and
attractive to men is that they are women twice over.

* * *

Woman is weak and man is strong--so we constantly hear, at any rate.
Then why, in the name of common-sense, do we expect to find in women
virtues that demand a strength of which we men are not capable?

* * *

There are women in the world who love with such ardour, such sincerity,
and such devotion, that, after their death, they ought to be canonized.

* * *

Love is a divine law; duty is only a human--nay, only a social--one.
That is why love will always triumph over duty; it is the greater of the
two.

* * *

Lovers are very much like thieves; they proceed very much in the same
way, and the same fate eventually awaits them. First, they take
superfluous precautions; then by degrees they neglect them, until they
forget to take the necessary ones, and they are caught.

* * *

A man who has been married enters the kingdom of heaven ex-officio,
having served his purgatory on earth; but if he has been married twice
he is invariably refused admittance, as the Sojourn of the Seraphs is no
place for lu