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

Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit for all the evil they refrain from.

For certain people, misfortune is a beacon that lights up the dark and baser sides of social life.

A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.

Love is perhaps no more than gratitude for pleasure.

No woman dares to refuse love without a motive, for nothing is more natural than to yield to love.

Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.