Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.

Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.

Many men nourish a pride which urges them to conceal their struggles and show themselves only as conquerors.

Reading brings us unknown friends

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.

Yes, I can understand that a man might go to a gambling table when he sees that all that lies between him and death is his last crown.

Let passion reach a catastrophe and it submits us to an intoxicating force far more powerful than the niggardly irritation of wine or of opium. The lucidity our ideas then achieve, and the delicacy of our overly exalted sensations, produce the strangest and most unexpected effects.