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Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

What is Art, monsieur, but Nature concentrated?

When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive anything, not even our virtues.

The most virtuous women have in them something that is never chaste.

The more a man judges, the less he loves.

Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser’s gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys.

Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.

If we study Nature attentively in its great evolutions as in its minutest works, we cannot fail to recognize the possibility of enchantment — giving to that word its exact significance. Man does not create forces; he employs the only force that exists and which includes all others, namely Motion, the breath incomprehensible of the sovereign Maker of the universe.

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.

The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means corruption.

Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.

Glory is the sun of the dead.

Equality may be a right, but no power on earth can convert it into fact.

Discretion is the best form of calculation.

My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one."

You know what my religion is. I am not orthodox, and I do not believe in the Roman Church. I think that if there is a scheme worthy of our kind it is that of human transformations causing the human being to advance toward unknown zones. That is the law of creations inferior to ourselves; it ought to be the law of superior creations. Swedenborgianism, which is only a repetition in the Christian sense of ancient ideas, is my religion, with the addition which I wish to make to it of the incomprehensibility of God.

As routine business must always be dispatched, there is always a fluctuating number of supernumeraries who cannot be dispensed with, and yet are liable to dismissal at a moment's notice. All of these naturally are anxious to be "established clerks." And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pigmies, came into the world. Possibly Napoleon retarded its influence for a time, for all things and all men were forced to bend to his will; but none the less the heavy curtain of Bureaucracy was drawn between the right thing to be done and the right man to do it. Bureaucracy was definitely organized, however, under a constitutional government with a natural kindness for mediocrity, a predilection for categorical statements and reports, a government as fussy and meddlesome, in short, as a small shopkeeper's wife.

A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.

Unfortunately her portrait will cure no one of the addiction to loving sweetly smiling angels with dreamy looks, innocent faces, and a strong-box for a heart.

Who would not at the present moment wish to retain the persuasion that wives are virtuous? Are they not the supreme flower of the country? Are they not all blooming creatures, fascinating the world by their beauty, their youth, their life and their love?To believe in their virtue is a sort of social religion, for they are the ornament of the world, and form the chief glory of France.

To saunter is a science; it is the gastronomy of the eye. To take a walk is to vegetate; to saunter is to live… To saunter is to enjoy life; it is to indulge the flight of fancy; it is to enjoy the sublime pictures of misery, of love, of joy, of gracious or grotesque physiognomies; it is to pierce with a glance the abysses of a thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions.

The virtue of women is perhaps a question of temperament.

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

Do not therefore allow yourself to be led astray by the specious good nature of such an institution as that of twin beds.
It is the silliest, the most treacherous, the most dangerous in the world. Shame and anathema to him who conceived it.

But does not happiness come from the soul within?

Women, perhaps, even require a little hypocrisy.

Ambitious men spend their youth in rendering themselves worthy of patronage; it is their great mistake. While the foolish creatures are laying in stores of knowledge and energy, so that they shall not sink under the weight of responsible posts that recede from them, schemers come and go who are wealthy in words and destitute of ideas, astonish the ignorant, and creep into the confidence of those who have a little knowledge.

The tranquility and peace that a scholar needs is something as sweet and exhilarating as love. Unspeakable joys are showered on us by the exertion of our mental faculties; the quest of ideas, and the tranquil contemplation of knowledge; delights indescribable, because purely intellectual and impalpable to our senses.

Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.

Love is like some fresh spring, that leaves its cresses, its gravel bed and flowers to become first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.

A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.

Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.

Between persons who are perpetually in each other's company dislike or love increases daily; every moment brings reasons to love or hate each other more and more.

The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the physical presence.

If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.

"I shall succeed!" he said to himself. So says the gambler; so says the great captain; but the three words that have been the salvation of some few, have been the ruin of many more.

Тhe secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.

Wisdom is the understanding of celestial things to which the Spirit is brought by Love.

Man dies in despair while the Spirit dies in ecstasy.

The tiniest flower is a thought, — a life which corresponds to certain lineaments of the Great Whole, of which they have a constant intuition.

Clouds signify the veil of the Most High.

Science is the language of the Temporal world, Love is that of the Spiritual world. Thus man takes note of more than he is able to explain, while the Angelic Spirit sees and comprehends. Science depresses man; Love exalts the Angel. Science is still seeking, Love has found. Man judges Nature according to his own relations to her; the Angelic Spirit judges it in its relation to Heaven. In short, all things have a voice for the Spirit.

Remorse is impotence, impotence which sins again. Repentance alone is powerful; it ends all.

We have long struggles with ourself, of which the outcome is one of our actions; they are, as it were, the inner side of human nature. This inner side is God's; the outer side belongs to men.

White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.

Tone is light in another shape. In music, instruments perform the functions of the colours employed in painting.

The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.

No man would have torn himself from the comfort of a morning nap to listen to a minstrel in a jacket; none but a maid awakes to songs of love.

It is as difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover from ruin.

Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters.

Sufferings predispose the mind to devotion, and nearly all young girls, impelled by instinctive tenderness, are inclined to mysticism, the deepest aspect of religion.

Pierrette, like all those who suffer more than they have strength to bear, kept silence.Silence is the only weapon by which such victims can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times give victory, crushing and complete, — for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it is one of the attributes of infinity.

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.

A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.

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

A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.

A husband who submits to his wife’s yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman’s influence ought to be entirely concealed.

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.

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

Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, in London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.

The fact is that love is of two kinds — one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.

Love may be the fairest gem which Society has filched from Nature; but what is motherhood save Nature in her most gladsome mood? A smile has dried my tears.

A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.

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.

The passion of love is essentially selfish, while motherhood widens the circle of our feelings.

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.

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

Power is action, and the elective principle is discussion.There is no policy, no statesmanship possible where discussion is permanent.

When religion and royalty are destroyed the people will attack the nobles; after the nobles, the rich.

Ideas consume the ages as passions consume men. When man is cured, humanity may possibly cure itself.

A grocer is drawn to his business by an attracting force quite equal to the repelling force which drives artists away from it. We do not sufficiently study the social potentialities which make up the various vocations of life. It would be interesting to know what determines one man to be a stationer rather than a baker; since, in our day, sons are not compelled to follow the calling of their fathers, as they were among the Egyptians.

A widow has two tasks before her, whose duties clash: she is a mother, and yet she must exercise paternal authority.

Lucidity of mind, like the rays of the sun, can have no effect except by the continuity of a direct line; it can divine only on condition of not breaking that line; the curvettings of chance bemuddle it.

There are two species of timidity, — the timidity of the mind, and the timidity of the nerves; a physical timidity, and a moral timidity. The one is independent of the other. The body may fear and tremble, while the mind is calm and courageous, or vice versa. This is the key to many moral eccentricities. When the two are united in one man, that man will be a cipher all his life.

Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections for their daydreams, and put their trust in him.

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?

And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be found in a young girl's love. At thirty years a woman asks her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his sake; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious; she can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride; times without number she brings comfort when a young girl can only make moan.

Nothing is so discreet as a young face, for nothing is less mobile; it has the serenity, the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is no character in women’s faces before the age of thirty.

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