When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer.

Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

A voyage without companionship, that is to say without conversation, is one of the saddest pleasures of life.

Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time.

The thing that must be preserved in all situations whatever is the reputation of one's character.

[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.