Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.

Spring appears and we are once more children.

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

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 novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?