Want of naturalness—the great failing in provincial women.
Their effusive and gracious gestures; those who play the first fiddle in the town are worse than the others.
LXI
Goethe, or any other German genius, esteems money at what it's worth. Until he has got an income of six thousand francs, he must think of nothing but his banking-account. After that he must never think of it again. The fool, on his side, does not understand the advantage there is of feeling and thinking like Goethe. All his life he feels in terms of money and thinks of sums of money. It is owing to this support from both sides, that the prosaic in this world seem to come off so much better than the high-minded.
LXII
In Europe, desire is inflamed by constraint; in America it is dulled by liberty.
LXIII
A mania for discussion has got hold of the younger generation and stolen it from love. While they are considering whether Napoleon was of service to France, they let the age of love speed past. Even with those who mean to be young, it is all affectation—a tie, a spur, their martial swagger, their all-absorbing self—and they forget to cast a glance at the girl who passes by so modestly and cannot go out more than once a week through want of means.
LXIV
I have suppressed a chapter on Prudery, and others as well.