Genius lasts longer than beauty.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

To define is to limit.

Then she paused. A rose shook in her blood and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals of her lips. They trembled. A southern wind of passion swept over her and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. "I love him", she said simply.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.

Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.

Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Conscience makes egotists of us all.