But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.

A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.

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.