If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible.

In family life people almost always adjust themselves to misfortune. They make a bed of it and hope makes them accept that bed, however hard it is.

Love is the poetry of the senses.

How did you get back?' asked Vautrin. 'I walked,' replied Eugene. 'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage, have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.' 'And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.

Coffee falls into the stomach... ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop... the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink...

In all lands, sailors form a race apart. They profess a congenital contempt for landlubbers. As for the tradesman, he understands nothing of sailors nor cares a fig about them. He is content to rob them if he can.

One day, about the middle of July 1838, one of the carriages, lately introduced to Paris cabstands, and known as Milords, was driving down the Rue de l'Universite, conveying a stout man of middle height in the uniform of a captain of the National Guard.