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

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, particularly in France.”)

[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 was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his...

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.

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.”)

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 all, a clear conscience.

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 weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the...

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 on the waters. I love also absolute, profound silence, and, in short, I love everything that is around me, no...

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 spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.”)[Le beau Laurence]

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 jeunesse, la beauté y sont impérissables. Mais l’homme n’a pour les sentir et les exprimer que des moyens absurdes et...

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

Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect

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

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 of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.”)[Letter to Jules Boucoiran, 4 March 1831]

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]

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.

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

[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.

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 lips that lie to her.”(Letter, 17 June 1837)

The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine

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 of life;One glimpse of brighter skiesBeyond the gathering mist –To make their life worthwhile.

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.

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 roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer...

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 to Mers.”Why didn’t you let them in?” asked Germain angrily. “People must be very suspicious in this part of the...

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 poor, exhausted and saddened souls who were ready to perish here below.

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.

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 is responsible for the faults of its legislature, what one can you find that is guiltier than yours?

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