It is quite easy for stupid people to be happy; they believe in fables, and they trot on in a beaten track like a horse on a tramway.

For Pastrasche was their alpha and omega; their treasury and granary; their store of gold and wand of wealth; their bread-winner and minister; their only friend and comforter. ... Pastrasche was their dog.

What we love once, we love forever. Shall there be joy in heaven over those who repent, yet no forgiveness for them upon earth? --"Wanda

Love, the one supreme, unceasing source of human felicity, the one sole joy which lifts the whole mortal existence into the empyrean, was by it [Christianity] degraded into the mere mechanical action of reproduction.

Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a snug brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy.

A just chastisement may benefit a man, though it seldom does; but an unjust one changes all his blood to gall.

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness.