To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.

The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.

Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is offensive.

If I meet the Christian Deity, I am lost: He is a tyrant and as such, is full of ideas of vengeance; His Bible speaks of nothing but fearful punishments. I never loved Him! I could never even believe that anyone did love Him sincerely. He is devoid of pity.... He will punish me in some abominable manner.

The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse - as a luxury befitting a young man.