Men hate those to whom they have to lie.
Crime is redeemed by remorse, but not by a blow of the axe or slipknot. Blood has to be washed by tears but not by blood.
A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.
The sewer is the conscience of the city.
France lost a great novel last night.
How frightened hypocrisy hastens to defend itself.
When I speak to you about myself, I am speaking to you about yourself. How is it you don’t see that?
I had a dream my life would be different from this hell I am living, so different from what it seemed. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
The convent is supreme egotism resulting in supreme self-denial.
Emotion is always new and the word has always served; therein lies the difficulty of expressing emotion.
If you would civilize a man, begin with his grandmother.
It is God who makes woman beautiful, it is the devil who makes her pretty.
There are no rules for felicity.
Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.
A fixed idea ends in madness or heroism.
Every idea must have a visible enfolding.
Creation lives, grows, and multiplies; man is but a witness.
A woman’s best qualities are harmful if undiluted with prudence.
The world of sleep has an existence of its own.
Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?