One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened.

The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

Ah! the soft starlight of virgin eyes.

Virtue is not a thing you can have by halves; it is or it is not.

Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.