Men err from selfishness; women because they are weak.

I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.

Love is above the laws, above the opinion of men; it is the truth, the flame, the pure element, the primary idea of the moral world.

However old a conjugal union, it still garners some sweetness. Winter has some cloudless days, and under the snow a few flowers still bloom.

Where no interest is takes in science, literature and liberal pursuits, mere facts and insignificant criticisms necessarily become the themes of discourse; and minds, strangers alike to activity and meditation, become so limited as to render all intercourse with them at once tasteless and oppressive.

If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.

What is love, if it can calculate and provide against its own decay?