Marthe Bibesco quotes:

The affairs of the royal house form a subject of conversation for those who, as a rule, would have no conversation.

Words express only the feelings we know already.

One should make one's life a mosaic. Let the general design be good, the colors lively, and the materials diversified ...

... love always betrays its intentions.

Children never grow tired; their likes and dislikes are constant; let them laugh at something once and they laugh always; do what you will, they are sure to say, 'Do it again!

collections are amusing only in the making; afterwards they are like sporting prints without the sport. The sons of collectors inherit only the corpse of their fathers' satisfied passion.

history ... a sort of immortality turned upside down. Her life stretched backwards through ten centuries.

marriage was a calamity, but it was not an occupation.

that sunlight of the dead which is called literature.

The arts are good and providential in that they allow the soul to imitate the movements of love, and to feel love without its being returned - which, perhaps, is the only way of feeling it permanently.

The birth of love is always accompanied by the idea of solitude. A single being appears, and the rest of the world grows empty.

there are no nationalities in heaven.

those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.