Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

Algebra applies to the clouds.

The supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being.

A man without a woman is like a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman who makes the man go off.

He saw before him two roads, both equally straight ; but he saw two; and that terrified him — him, who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.

A criminal remains a criminal whether he uses a convict's suit or a monarch's crown.

The man is placed where the Earth ends, the woman, where the heaven starts.