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.

There is no such sense of solitude as that which we experience upon the silent and vast elevations of great mountains. Lifted high above the level of human sounds and habitations, among the wild expanses and colossal features of Nature, we are thrilled in our loneliness with a strange fear and elation – an ascent above the reach of life's expectations or companionship, and the tremblings of a wild and undefined misgivings.

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.

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.

What a fool I was! and yet, in the sight of angels, are we any wiser as we grow older? It seems to me, only, that our illusions change as we go on; but, still, we are madmen all the same.