At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

The difference breeds hatred.

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.

I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.

The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.