Discouragement seizes us only when we can no longer count on chance.

Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.

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.

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

Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.

Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect

Unrequited love is as different from the mutual love as the error from the truth.