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.

As a rule, only the poor are generous. Rich people can always find excellent reasons for not handing over twenty thousand francs to a relative.

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.

Now literary success can only be won in solitude by persevering labor.

Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.