Nicholas-Edme Rétif or Restif, aka Rétif de la Bretonne

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

Happiness is not a wild plant, which comes spontaneously, like weeds in gardens: it is a delicious fruit, it does so, by dint of culture.

Depravity follows the progress of enlightenment. Very natural thing that men can not light up without being corrupted.

No one is bolder than the fool who does not know what makes it default : the spiritual, on the contrary, is shameful in youth before merit, believing that everyone feels and thinks like him, and better than he that everyone does what he must do and it only becomes bolder than in maturity, when he saw, from experience how other men are beneath him.

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