You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

Trust your heart rather than your head.

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Since men cannot create new forces, but merely combine and control those which already exist, the only way in which they can preserve themselves is by uniting their separate powers in a combination strong enough to overcome any resistance, uniting them so that their powers are directed by a single motive and act in concert.

The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

It has always pleased me to read while eating if I have no companion; it gives me the society I lack. I devour alternately a page and a mouthful; it is as though my book were dining with me.

I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.