"The life of a woman is a long dissimulation. Candor, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty — a woman has each of these but once. When lost, she must simulate them the rest of her life."

"The heart of youth is reached through the senses; the senses of age are reached through the heart."

"A secret passion defends the heart of a woman better than her moral sense."

"The ear is the last resort of chastity: after it is expelled from the heart, it takes refuge there."

"At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than of women: he is more in love with the sex than with the individual, however charming she may be."

"Restif de la Bretonne undoubtedly holds a remarkable place in French literature. He was inordinately vain, of extremely relaxed morals, and perhaps not entirely sane. His books were written with haste, and their licence of subject and language renders them quite unfit for general perusal."

"Dis, cher aimé! Veux-tu venir vers ces pays où passent les caravanes, à l'ombre des palmiers de Kachmyr ou de Mysore? Veux-tu venir au Bengale choisir, dans les bazars, des roses, des étoffes et des filles d'Arménie, blanches comme le pelage des hermines? Veux-tu lever des armées soulever le nord de l'Iran, comme un jeune Cyaxare? Ou, plutôt, si nous appareillions pour Ceylan, où sont les blancs éléphants aux tours vermeilles, les aras de feu dans les feuillages, et d'en-soleillées demeures où tombent les pluies des jets d'eau dans les cours de marbre? [...] Quel plaisir d'attacher nos patins d'acier sur les routes de la pâle Suède! ou vers Christiania, dans les sentiers et les fjords éclatants des monts de la Norvège!"

"Vivre? les serviteurs feront cela pour nous."

"La Terre, dis-tu? Qu'a-t-elle donc jamais réalisé, cette goutte de fange glacée, dont l'Heure ne sait que mentir au milieu du ciel?"

"The first task of the new man is to restore the values of the body. He starts out from the demands and attributes of the body. This is the great revolution of the twentieth century which a section of French intellectuals have dimly sensed but which they have not been able to grasp clearly and communicate to the nation: the revolution of the body, restoration of the body […] The new man starts with the body, he knows that the body is the articulation of the soul, and that the soul can only express itself, reveal itself, acquire substance in the body. There is nothing more spiritual than this recognition of the body. It is the soul that calls, that demands salvation, that saves itself by rediscovering the body.Nothing is less materialist than this movement. The pathetic mistake of the last generation of rationalists, one which summed up all the dissolution, all the bastardization of their pseudo-humanism, was to accuse of materialism a revolution which salvages and restores the sources and mainstays of the spirit."

"Finally, he allowed himself to look around, to desire. This whole world, which he had disdained for so many months, appeared new. He could have hated men, but he only saw the women, whom he adored. It was a balmy evening. If he had looked at the horizon, as he did at the front, but immediately forgot to do in that grand city that demands the attention of all a man's senses, he would have seen a charming sky. A starless Paris sky. It was a mild evening, slightly veined with cold. The women were opening their furs. They were glancing at him. Workers and girls. The girls tempted him more than the workers, and he wanted to play with his desire to the point of grinding his teeth or fainting. Everyone seemed to be moving towards a goal. And he, too, had a goal, the form of which was still unknown to him. Sooner or later, that shape would reveal itself."

"Myriam had performed a miracle for him, the miracle of money. The appearance of money in some lives can be a miracle like that of love: it stirs the imagination and the senses powerfully, at least in the first moment."

"Most of what is reported by historians of the lives of men is but a residue; they speak of political action, but political action is but a residue. There is, for example, the sky, colours, smells, women, children, old men. God is present everywhere bearing a thousand names: politics and history takes no account of this."

"“You see, my little one, bringing a child into the world is the ultimate selfish act. When you make a child, you're thinking only of yourself, and sometimes of the woman you're making one with. That's the truth of the matter. Then your selfishness continues. You inevitably impose an education and a direction on this child. We're neither of those fools, those pale turnips of rationalism, those Pilates who wash their hands and say: “I don't want to impose anything on my son; later, he'll choose.” You can't make a vacuum around your child; at most, you can make slack. Whether we like it or not.""

"It could very easily not be bearable; even with love, one gets the sense it barely is."

"And now I salute thee with awe, with veneration, and wonder, ancient India, of whom I am the adept, the India of the highest splendor of art and philosophy. May thy awakening astonish the Occident, decadent, mean, daily dwindling, slayer of nations, slayer of Gods, slayer of souls, which yet bows down still, ancient India, before the prodigies of thy primordial conceptions!"

"The first modern woman."

"The principal themes of the [Heptaméron] are rape, seductions bordering on rape, incest and numerous infringements of the sex and marriage codes of aristocratic Europe."

"God has put into the heart of man love and the boldness to sue, and into the heart of woman fear and the courage to refuse."

"Pleasures are sins: we regret to offend God; but, then, pleasures please us."

"Since love teaches how to trick the tricksters, how much reason have we to fear it — we who are poor simple creatures!"

"Love is a disease that kills nobody, but one whose time has come."

"No one perfectly loves God who does not perfectly love some of his creatures."

"A woman of honor should never suspect another of things she would not do herself."

"Many weep for the sin, while they laugh over the pleasure."

"There are women so hard to please that it seems as if nothing less than an angel will suit them: hence it comes that they often meet with devils."

"Hypocrites are wicked: they hide their defects with so much care, that their hearts are poisoned by them."

"When one has one good day in the year, one is not wholly unfortunate."

"We shall all be perfectly virtuous when there is no longer any flesh on our bones."

"No one ever perfectly loved God who did not perfectly love some of his creatures in this world."

"Extreme concupiscence may be found under an extreme austerity."

"I confess I should be glad if my pleasures were as pleasing to God as they are to me: in that case, I should often find matter for rejoicing."

"It is difficult to repent of what gives us pleasure."

"The virtuous action, done for virtue's sake alone, is truly laudable."

"Love works miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and strengthening the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favoring the passions, destroying reason, and, in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy."

"There is no greater fool than he who thinks himself wise; no one wiser than he who suspects he is a fool."

"We are always more disposed to laugh at nonsense than at genuine wit; because the nonsense is more agreeable to us, being more comformable to our own natures: fools love folly, and wise men wisdom."

"Men are so accustomed to lie, that one can not take too many precautions before trusting them — if they are to be trusted at all."

"Blessed, unquestionably, is he who has it in his power to do evil, yet does it not."

"Un malheureux cherche l'autre."

"I have heard much of these languishing lovers, but I never yet saw one of them die for love."

"To me it seems much better to love a woman as a woman, than to make her one's idol, as many do. For my part, I am convinced that it is better to use than to abuse."

"Man is wise ... when he recognises no greater enemy than himself."

"He who knows his own incapacity, knows something, after all."

"Mariage est un état de si longue durée, qu'il ne doit être commencé légèrement, ne sans l'opinion de nos meilleurs amis et parents."

"God always helps madmen, lovers, and drunkards."

"There is in us more of the appearance of sense and of virtue than of the reality."

"In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken."

"The true and the false speak the same language."

"He who knows his incapacity, knows something."