Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: familiarity.

Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.

There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.

Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.

Stupidity assumes two forms, it speaks or is silent. Mute stupidity is bearable.

The world will avenge itself upon all happiness in which it has no share.

All human beings go through a previous life... Who knows how many fleshly forms the heir of heaven occupies before he can be brought to understand the value of that silence and solitude of spiritual worlds?