Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
-Хүү минь, чи надад ямар ч өргүй гэж бодож явах эрхийг би чамд олголоо.
for a woman knows the face of the man she loves like a sailor knows the open sea
Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another’s happiness than in your own.
And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.
A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.
If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down.
Вера в себя способна творить такие же чудеса, как вера в Господа Бога.
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man’s entire existence.
Poverty has in its favour an exquisite sleep filled with beautiful dreams.
Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling.
Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!
Virtue will cut your head off, vice will only cut your hair.
Marriage must fight constantly against a monster which devours everything: routine.
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 doorknob and came back.
Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.
Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.
It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
Doing his utmost, deploying all his energy, a young man setting out from zero can wind up after ten years somewhere below where he started.
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.
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?
Our heart is a treasury; if you pour out all its wealth at once, you are bankrupt.
Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
Lucien took the cigar and lit it, in the Spanish fashion, from that of the priest. “He is right,” Lucien thought; “there is plenty of time to kill myself.
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.
Man cannot spend all his time doing evil, and even in the company of pirates there must be some sweet moments on their sinister ship when you feel as if you were aboard a pleasure yacht.
No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
Man can start with aversion and end with love, but if he begins with love and comes round to aversion he will never get back to love.
Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.
Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.Many men desire to have these two editions of the same work, although it is proof of deep inferiority in a man if he cannot make his wife his mistress. Seeking variety is a sign of impotence.
Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
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.
So, my dear fellow, if I don’t believe in God, I believe still less in man.
If youth were not ignorant and timid, civilization would be impossible.
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 than it has ever saved.
He became…the ideal of that virtue which delights in its own work…doing everything with simplicity and dignity, for he seemed to realize that his objective added nobility to everything he did.
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 feeling anything but an entire world poured into a thought?
We flew back home like swallows. ‘Is it happiness that makes us so light?’ Agathe asked.
We estimate wrongdoing in proportion to the purity of our conscience
Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.
The word ‘love,’ used in connection with the reproduction of our species, is the most odious blasphemy taught in our times.
Alas! Where love is concerned, self-interested deception is superior to the truth itself, which is why so many men pay so high a price to clever deceivers.
Paris that eternal monstrous marvel … the city of a hundred-thousand novels … a living creature, the great courtesan whose face and heart and mind-boggling morals they know: “They” are the lovers of Paris.