“A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.”

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

“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.”

“Friendship has its illusions no less than love.”

“God's only excuse is that he does not exist.”

“I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.”

“If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.”

“In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.”

“Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.”

“Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.”

“Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one.”

“Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.”

“One can acquire everything in solitude except character.”

“Only great minds can afford a simple style.”

“Our true passions are selfish.”

“People happy in love have an air of intensity.”

“People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.”

“Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.”

“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.”

“Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.”

“The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.”

“The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.”

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

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”

“To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.”

“What is really beautiful must always be true.”