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

But does not happiness come from the soul within?

But woman brings disorder into society through passion.

Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is 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?

Whereas scoundrels become reconciled after knifing one another, lovers break up irrevocably over a mere glance or word.

Love is the only passion which suffers neither past nor future.