The smoke of glory is not worth the smoke of a pipe.

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.

No human being can control love, and no one is to blame either for feeling it or for losing it. What alone degrades a woman is falsehood.

There is but on virtue--the eternal sacrifice of self.

Sorrow makes us very good or very bad.

I regard as a mortal sin not only the lying of the senses in matters of love, but also the illusion which the senses seek to create where love is only partial. I say, I believe, that one must love with all of one's being, or else live, come what may, a life of complete chastity.

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