Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing? Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all. The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth. The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse - as a luxury befitting a young man. The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music. The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face. Mathematics…allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness. A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love. | 
