No religion can be built on force.

O heart! love is thy bane and thy antidote.

... what is there over which the incomparable beauty of childhood would not triumph?

No religion can be built on force.

If people were not wicked I should not mind their being stupid; but, to our misfortune, they are both.

My strength has not equaled my mad ambition. I have remained obscure; I have done worse -- I have touched success, and allowed it to escape me.

I loved [fairy stories] so, and my mother weighed down by grief had given up telling me them. At Nohant I found Mmes. d'Ardony's and Perrault's tales in old editions which became my chief joy for five or six years ... I've never read them since, but I could tell each tale straight through, and I don't think anything in all one's intellecutal life can be compared to these delights of imagination.