When you have loved as she has loved, you grow old beautifully.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.

I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

For men, as a rule, love is but an episode which takes place among the other affairs of the day, and the emphasis laid on it in novels gives it an importance which is untrue to life. There are few men to whom it is the most important thing in the world, and they are not the very interesting ones; even women, with whom the subject is of paramount interest, have a contempt for them.

It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.