La beauté qui parle aux yeux, reprit-elle, n’est que le prestige d’un moment; l’œuil du corps n’est pas toujours celui de l’ me.”(“The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes,” she continued, “is only the...

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.

There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

[On Chopin’s Preludes:]”His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night...

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. Thereverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.

Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujours par le compliqué.”(“The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route.”)[Letter to Armand Barbès, 12 May 1867]

Ce n’est pas la première fois que je remarque combien, en France particulièrement, les mots ont plus d’empire que les idées.”(“It’s not the first time I’ve noticed how much more power words have than ideas,...

God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.

The maid told him that a girl and a child had come looking for him, but since she didn’t know them, she hadn’t cared to ask them in, and had told them to go on...

May every soul that touches mine—be it the slightest contact –Get therefore some good;Some little grace, one kindly thought;One aspiration yet unfelt;One bit of courageFor the darkening sky;One gleam of faithTo brave the thickening ills...

I’m beginning to believe that there are angels disguised as men who pass themselves off as such and who inhabit the earth for a while to console and lift up with them toward heaven the...

One is happy as a result of one’s own efforts once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above...

The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine

No place is ugly to those who understand the virtues and sweetness of everything that God has made.

Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all...

I love everything that makes up a milieu, the rolling of the carriages and the noise of the workmen in Paris, the cries of a thousand birds in the country, the movement of the ships...

Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect

J’ai un but, une t che, disons le mot, une passion. Le métier d’écrire en est une violente et presque indestructible.”(“I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession...

Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the...

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.

La vie ressemble plus souvent à un roman qu’un roman ne ressemble à la vie.”(“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.”)

It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that...

You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

La nature est une oeuvre d’art, mais Dieu est le seul artiste qui existe, et l’homme n’est qu’un arrangeur de mauvais goût. La nature est belle, le sentiment s’exhale de tous ses pores; l’amour, la...

Let us leave political questions to be decided by the powers concerned,” Sir Ralph would say, “as we have adopted a form of government which forbids us to discuss our interests ourselves. If a nation...

Nature alone can speak to our intelligence an imperishable language, never changing, because it remains within the bounds of eternal truth and of what is absolutely noble and beautiful.

[I]t is that we are too apt to despise what appears to be neither good nor beautiful, and thus we lose what is helpful and salutary.