There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.

For in those tacit understandings which maintain the bond of family union, the mother is really the mistress of her daughter only upon the condition of continually presenting herself to her as a model of wisdom and type of perfection.

...joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.

I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.

True love always makes a man better, no matter who the woman is that inspires it.

Darling, replied Valentine, has not the count just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words,- "Wait and hope"?

Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)