For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleasure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?

God reveals Himself, unfailingly, to the solitary, thoughtful seeker

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.

Man is no match for woman where mischief reigns.

Paris, like every pretty woman, is subject to inexplicable whims of beauty and ugliness.

In family life people almost always adjust themselves to misfortune. They make a bed of it and hope makes them accept that bed, however hard it is.

Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.