A beautiful book is a victory won in all the battlefields of human thought.

Woman is a most charming creature, who changes her heart as easily as she does her gloves.

To speak of love is to make love.

You're a fine fastidious young man, as proud as a lion, as gentle as a girl. You'd make a good catch for the devil.

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?

Noble passions are like vices: the more they are satisfied, the greater they grow, Mothers and gamblers are insatiable.