We do not attach ourselves lastingly to anything that has not cost us care, labor or longing.

Give to a wounded heart seclusion; consolation nor reason ever effected anything in such a case.

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.

Genius is answerable only to itself; it is the sole judge of the means, since it alone knows the end; thus genius must consider itself as above the law, for it is the task of genius to remake the law; moreover the man who frees himself from his time and place may take everything, hazard everything, for everything is his by right.

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

The errors of women spring, almost always, from their faith in the good, or their confidence in the true

However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?