those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.

The arts are good and providential in that they allow the soul to imitate the movements of love, and to feel love without its being returned - which, perhaps, is the only way of feeling it permanently.

those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.

The birth of love is always accompanied by the idea of solitude. A single being appears, and the rest of the world grows empty.

history ... a sort of immortality turned upside down. Her life stretched backwards through ten centuries.

marriage was a calamity, but it was not an occupation.

Words express only the feelings we know already.