You may imitate, but never counterfeit.

Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.

Of necessity she went further in aversion than she had gone in love, for her hatred was not in proportion to her love but to her disappointed hopes.

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

A man like you is a god, not just a machine covered with skin, but a theater where fine feelings sprout and grow-and feelings are all that matters, as far as I’m concerned. Is a...

And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.

Happy?” asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. “Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of pleasure.

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.

Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

Wit needs leisure, and certain inequalities of position

You have wavered uncertainly between two systems, between drawing and coloring, between the painstaking phlegm, the stiff precision, of the old German masters, and the dazzling ardor, the happy fertility, of the Italian painters.

Aki azzal dicsekszik, hogy sohasem változtatja meg a véleményét, az úgy tesz, mintha arra vállalkozna, hogy mindig nyílegyenes vonalban fog haladni. Együgyű az ilyen, hisz a csalhatatlanságban. Márpedig nincsenek elvek, csak események vannak; nincsenek törvények,...

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better.

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.

The errors of women spring, almost always, from their faith in the good, or their confidence in the true

The viscountess had raised the forefinger of her right hand and made a pretty gesture toward a stool at her feet. There was such intense tyrannical passion in the gesture that the marquis relinquished the...

Il existe je ne sais quoi de grand et d’épouvantable dans le suicide. Les chutes d’une multitude de gens sont sans danger, comme celles des enfants qui tombent de trop bas pour se blesser; mais...

There is something great and terrible about suicide.

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.

Notre conscience est un juge infaillible, quand nous ne l’avons pas encore assassinée.

We flew back home like swallows. ‘Is it happiness that makes us so light?’ Agathe asked.

Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer – Death has never forsaken any man

No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and...

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.

A mother’s life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

Reading brings us unknown friends

Amit a moralisták az emberi szív mélységeinek neveznek, voltaképpen csalóka gondolatok, az egyéni érdek önkéntelen rezdülései. Ezek a lelki bonyodalmak, amelyekről annyi üres szó esik, ezek a hirtelen pálfordulások, nem egyebek élvezeteink javára végzett számításoknál.

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.

Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.

He went to bed and slept the sleep of the good-for-nothing which, by an anachronism not a single songwriter has yet struck, is proven to be more sound than that of innocence

No one ought even to desert a woman after throwing her a heap of gold in her distress! He ought to love her forever! You are young, only twenty-one, and kind and upright and fine....

He hesitated till the last moment, but finally dropped them in the box, saying, “I shall win!”–the cry of a gambler, the cry of the great general, the compulsive cry that has ruined more men...

Modesty is the conscience of the body.

Love is a game in which one always cheats.

We estimate wrongdoing in proportion to the purity of our conscience

This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army of the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive...