Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

...Man lives by affirmation even more than he does by bread.

Those who do not weep, do not see.

It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.

His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.

A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.