"C'est la violente impression du laid sur une �me faite pour aimer ce qui est beau."

"Exalted by a sentiment of which she was proud, and that overcame all her arrogance, she was reluctant to let a moment of her life go by without occupying it with some remarkable deed."

"Beauty is the promise of happiness."

"The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage."

"I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought."

"The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears."

"The only way of touching a heart is to wound it"

"What is the use of a love that makes one yawn? One might as well take to religion."

"The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America."

"Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore."

"An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table."

"Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life."

"Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar."

"I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself."

"The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God."

"Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?"

"Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life."

"After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne."

"There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness."

"A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love."

“We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.”

“My work is the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums...”

“And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.”

“Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?”