The capacity for passion is both cruel and divine.

When mental sickness increases until it reaches the danger point, do not exhaust yourself by efforts to trace back to original causes. Better accept them as inevitable and save your strength to fight against the effects.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Simplicity is the essence of the great, the true, the beautiful in art.

Party politics is now a real farce.

I'm not full of virtues and noble qualities. I love, but I love strongly, exclusive, stedfasty.

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.