Jeanne Julie Eleonore de Lespinasse Quotes

Oh! you shall see how well I know how to love! I can only love; I know only how to love! With moderate faculties, we can yet do much when we center them on a single object.

nothing is stronger or better founded than the sentiments for which we can give no reason.

Calumny spreads like an oil-spot: we endeavor to cleanse it, but the mark remains.

I love the abandonment to impulse, I act from impulse only, and I love to madness that others do the same by me.

I do not comprehend those rules of conduct that make us so content with self and so cold to those we love. I detest prudence, I even hate (suffer me to say so) those duties of friendship which substitute propriety for interest, and circumspection for feeling. How shall I say it? I love the abandonment to impulse, I act from impulse only, and I love to madness that others do the same by me.

You soothe my soul. You fill it with so tender a sentiment that it is sweet to live during the time that I see you.

Oh, my dear, my tragedy is that you don't need to be loved as I know how to love.

Ah! mon Dieu! how the mind shrinks by loving! it is true that the soul does not, but what can one do with a soul?

The logic of the heart is absurd

You know that when I hate you, it is because I love you to a point of passion that unhinges my soul.

If you can attain repose and calm, believe that you have seized happiness.

I read what I feel, and not what I see.

none but the unhappy are worthy of friends; if your soul had never suffered never could you have entered mine.

Oh! how many times we die before death!

I love you as one should, to excess. With folly, delight and despair.