I have often met with happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God for his mercy.

The story she had told me was possible, but it was not believable.

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

Hope is nothing but a deceitful flatterer accepted by reason only because it is often in need of palliatives.

There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.

There is no such thing as a perfectly happy or perfectly unhappy man in the world. One has more happiness in his life and another more unhappiness, and the same circumstance may produce widely different effects on individuals of different temperaments.

God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He required to know His own principle.