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.

I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing - the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.

The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.

Faith is an excitement and an enthusiasm: it is a condition of intellectual magnificence to which we must cling as to a treasure, and not squander on our way through life in the small coin of empty words, or in exact and priggish argument.

Fame and admiration weigh not a feather in the scale against friendship and love, for the heart languishes all the same.

... the progress of the language has caused us to lose many old treasures. It is thus with all progress, and one must make the best of it.

Some say that cats are devils, but they behave badly only when they are alone. When they are among us cats are angels.