When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband the end is come; she no longer loves him. Conjugal affection expires in her last quarrel. A woman who is guided by her head, and not by her heart, is a terrible companion: she has all the defects of a passionate woman, with none of her good qualities; she is without mercy, without love, without virtue, without sex. The revelation of chastity in man is inexpressibly radiant. Misery is a tonic to some; to others it is a dissolvent. A woman who has a lover becomes very indulgent. Power is clement, it is open to conviction, it is just and undisturbed; but the anger engendered by weakness is pitiless. Monomanias are not contagious; but where the insanity lurks in constant discussions and in the manner in which things in general are regarded, then it may become so. One of the misfortunes to which great minds are subjected is that they are forced to understand all things,—vices as well as virtues. Beauty is like nobility: it cannot be acquired. Nothing good is to be expected of those who acknowledge their faults, repent, and then sin again. The truly great acknowledge their faults to no one, but they punish themselves accordingly. Do not fear to make enemies,—unfortunate is he who has none; but try to give no cause for ridicule, and avoid the appearance of evil. There is as much mud in the upper ranks of society as in the lower, but in the former it is gilded. The most superb vengeance is the disdain of one at hand. Laws are not always so cruel as are the usages of the world. Historians are privileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs in the same manner that our newspapers express but the sentiments of their readers. A lover is a herald who proclaims a woman’s merit, beauty, or wit. What does a husband proclaim? A woman’s real physiognomy does not begin until she is thirty. Up to that age, the painter finds in her face but pink and white, and a repetition of the uniform and depthless smiles of love and youth. Science consists in imitating nature. Through a peculiar mental contraction, women see only the defects in a man of talent, and in a fool but his good qualities. Love may be heard in the voice before it is seen in the eyes. The heart of a woman of twenty-five is as little like that of a girl of eighteen as the heart of a woman of forty is like that of a woman of thirty: each age creates a new woman. Love has its escutcheon. Man clings to life in proportion to its infamy: it is then a protestation, a vengeance of every moment. Glory is the deification of egotism. He who foresees a bright future marches through the miseries of existence like an innocent man led to the scaffold. He knows not shame. The slow execution of works of genius demands either a ready fortune or a cynical indifference to poverty. No man can flatter himself that he knows a woman and makes her happy until he sees her continually at his feet.