Thinking is seeing.... Every human science is based on deduction, which is a slow process of seeing by which we work up from the effect to the cause; or, in a wider sense, all poetry like every work of art proceeds from a swift vision of things.

The great secret of social alchemy is to profit best from each stage in our lives, to gather all its leaves in spring, all its flowers in summer, and all its fruits in autumn.

If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.

The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.

In France we can cauterize wounds but we do not yet know any remedy for the injuries inflicted by a bon mot.

Most geometricians, chemists, mathematicians, and great scientists submit religion to reason only to discover a problem as unsolvable as that of squaring a circle.

Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.