The winter's frost must rend the burr of the nut before the fruit is seen. So adversity tempers the human heart, to discover its real worth.

I declare, on my soul and conscience, that the attainment of power, or of a great name in literature, seemed to me an easier victory than a success with some young, witty, and gracious lady of high degree.

We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.

A lover teaches a wife all her husband has kept from her.

Time is the only capital of those who just have their inteligence as fortune.

When chaste people need body or mind to resort to action or thought, they find steel in their muscles or knowledge in their intelligence. Theirs the diabolic vigor or the black magic of will power.

It's catastrophies which turn wise and strong people into philosophers.