The only unions legitimate for all time are those that answer to a real passion.
CXVI
To be happy with laxity of morals, one wants the simplicity of character that is found in Germany and Italy, but never in France. (The Duchess de C——)
CXVII
It is their pride that makes the Turks deprive their women of everything that can nourish crystallisation. I have been living for the last three months in a country where the titled folk will soon be carried just as far by theirs.
Modesty is the name given here by men to the exactions of aristocratic pride run mad. Who would risk a lapse of modesty? Here also, as at Athens, the intellectuals show a marked tendency to take refuge with courtesans—that is to say, with the women whom a scandal shelters from the need to affect modesty. (Life of Fox.)
CXVIII
In the case of love blighted by too prompt a victory, I have seen in very tender characters crystallisation trying to form later. "I don't love you a bit," she says, but laughing.
CXIX
The present-day education of women—that odd mixture of works of charity and risky songs ("Di piacer mi balza il cor," in La Gazza Ladra)[(64)]—is the one thing in the world best calculated to keep off happiness. This form of education produces minds completely inconsequent. Madame de R——, who was afraid of dying, has just met her death through thinking it funny to throw her medicines out of the window. Poor little women like her take inconsequence for gaiety, because, in appearance, gaiety is often inconsequent. 'Tis like the German, who threw himself out of the window in order to be sprightly.