Our birthdays are feathers in the broad wing of time.

Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.

Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven.

Cares are often more difficult to throw off than sorrows; the latter die with time, the former grow.

Without God there is for mankind no purpose, no goal, no hope, only a wavering future, an eternal dread of every darkness.

Passion makes the best observations and the sorriest conclusions.

A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the face of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.

Strong characters are brought out by change of situation, and gentle ones by permanence.

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's.

No heroine can create a hero through love of one, but she can give birth to one.