Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

Vivacity is the health of the spirit.

Virtue in women is perhaps a question of temperament.

Let nothing dupe you! Such is the horrible maxim that acts as a solvent upon every noble feeling man experiences.

It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance.

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?