When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.

The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.

Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.

A mother who is really a mother is never free.

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.

There is no such thing as a great talent without great will power.

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.

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.

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.

A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

Finance, like time, devours its own children.

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.