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

Whereas scoundrels become reconciled after knifing one another, lovers break up irrevocably over a mere glance or word.

A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.

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.

What moralists describe as the mysteries of the human heart are solely the deceiving thoughts, the spontaneous impulses of self-regard. The sudden changes in character, about which so much has been said, are instinctive calculations for the furtherance of our own pleasures. Seeing himself now in his fine clothes, his new gloves and shoes, Eugène de Rastignac forgot his noble resolve. Youth, when it swerves toward wrong, dares not look in the mirror of conscience; maturity has already seen itself there. That is the whole difference between the two phases of life.

Science is the language of the temporal world; love is that of the spiritual world. Man, indeed, describes more than he explains; while the angelic spirit sees and understands. Science saddens man; love enraptures the angel; science is still seeking; love has found.

The more you judge, the less you love.