Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost.

God forgive me everything!' she said, feeling the impossibility of struggling.

If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.

There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.

I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

Everything I know, I know because of love.

Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same.