Once my heart was captured, reason was shown the door, deliberately and with a sort of frantic joy. I accepted everything, I believed everything, without struggle, without suffering, without regret, without false shame. How can one blush for what one adores?

I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.

Work is not man's punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

One never knows how much a family may grow; and when a hive is too full, and it is necessary to form a new swarm, each one thinks of carrying away his own honey.

... when we are misunderstood it is always our own fault. What the reader wants most of all is to be able to grasp what we think; but you loftily refuse to comply.

The prayers of a lover are more imperious than the menaces of the whole world

The marriage vow is an absurdity imposed by society.