For young people always begin by loving exaggeration, that infirmity of noble minds.
For avarice begins where poverty ends.
Where some one else’s welfare is concerned, a young girl becomes as ingenious as a thief. Guileless where she herself is in question, and full of foresight for me,-she is like a heavenly angel forgiving the strange incomprehensible sins of earth.
Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenceless creature?
If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.
It’s not enough to be a good person. You also have to show it.
The mind, too, has its regimen. It needs gymnastics, just like the body does.
One hour of love has a whole life in it.
Love is the only way on which even the dim-witted reaches certain heights.
But woman brings disorder into society through passion.
France is a country that loves to change their government if it is always the same.
Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman’s face.
Love which economizes is never true love.
Nothing about me surprises me.
Yes, I can understand that a man might go to a gambling table when he sees that all that lies between him and death is his last crown.
In painting, you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no-one can deal with it.
A husband and wife who have separate bedrooms have either drifted apart or found happiness.
Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.
The victory always has a lot of parents but the defeat is always an orphan.