Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

One of the most detestable habits of Lilliputian minds is to find their own littleness in others.

A monster which devours everything - that is familiarity.

True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit.

When passion is not fed, it changes to need. At this juncture, marriage becomes a fixed idea in the mind of the bourgeois, being the only means whereby he can win a woman and appropriate her to his uses.

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?