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.

that sunlight of the dead which is called literature.

The affairs of the royal house form a subject of conversation for those who, as a rule, would have no conversation.

Words express only the feelings we know already.

... love always betrays its intentions.

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

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