You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature.

There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.

Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.

Perhaps, she says (Madame de la Rougierre), Other souls than human are sometimes born into the world & clothed in human flesh.

Old persons are sometimes as unwilling to die as tired-out children are to say good night and go to bed.

How marvellously lie our anxieties, in filmy layers, one over the other! Take away that which has lain on the upper surface for so long - the care of cares - the only one, as it seemed to you, between your soul and the radiance of Heaven - and straight you find a new stratum there.

but curiosity is a restless and scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.