A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride.

A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to love.

Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought.

The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world

God's only excuse is that he does not exist.

The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.