By dint of making sacrifices, a man grows interested in the person who exacts them. Great ladies, like courtesans, know this truth by instinct.

We must certainly acknowledge that solitude is a fine thing; but it is a pleasure to have some one who can answer, and to whom we can say, from time to time, that solitude is a fine thing.

A sick man, surrounded by those who love him, nursed by those who wish earnestly that he should live, will recover (all other things being equal), when another patient tended by hirelings will die. Doctors decline to see unconscious magnestism in this phenomenon; for them it is the result of intelligent nursing, of exact obedience to their orders; but many a mother knows the virtue of such ardent projections of strong, unceasing prayer.

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

Inspiration is the opportunity of genius.

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

It's catastrophies which turn wise and strong people into philosophers.