Love is the reduction of the universe to the single being, and the expansion of a single being, even to God - Honoré de Balzac

The faint hints of color in her complexion, her tawny blond hair, her extraordinary thinness, all spoke of that unearthly grace modern poets find in the medieval statues. Had she been happy, she'd have been ravishing: happiness constitutes pure poetry, for women.

Nature knows nothing but solid bodies; your science deals only with combinations of surfaces. And so nature constantly gives the lie to all your laws; can you name one to which no fact makes an exception?

The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.