From that moment our love became sad, and sadness is a disease which gives the death-blow to affection.

If you want to make people laugh, your face must remain serious.

Love is three quarters curiosity.

A man who makes known his love by words is a fool.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.

The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance; forgiveness is the offspring of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy carelessness.

The raging fire which urged us on was scorching us; it would have burned us had we failed to restrain it.