The Ladies' Paradise

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

Very well, sir. A woman's opinion, however humble she may be, is always worth listening to, if she's got any sense...If you put yourself in my hands, I shall certainly make a decent man of you.

Never subject to the rules, believing that the correct judgement and healthy nature keep her in the honesty she lived in.

His creation was a sort of new religion; the churches, gradually deserted by a wavering faith, were replaced by this bazaar, in the minds of the idle women of Paris. Women now came and spent their leisure time in his establishment, the shivering and anxious hours they formerly passed in churches: a necessary consumption of nervous passion, a growing struggle of the god of dress against the husband, the incessantly renewed religion of the body with the divine future of beauty.

Le había quedado, de los tiempos en los que soñaba con dedicarse a la literatura y se juntaba con poetas, una desesperación universal.

no le había quedado más remedio que hacerse una confesión: aún temblaba al ver pasar a Mouret, pero ahora sabía que no era de miedo.

Yo la quiero... Hace mucho que lo sabe. No juegue el juego cruel de fingir que no entiende... y no tema nada.