A great writer is nothing less than a martyr who does not die.

To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, it is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own.

Good befalls us while we sleep, sometimes.

Let us leave the cure of public evils to those quacks, the statesmen.

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.