Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
One is happy once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.
Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.
We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect
Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.
The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.
You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.
It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.
The capacity of passion is both cruel and divine
Whoever has loved knows all that life contains of sorrow and joy.
Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.
Art for art's sake is an empty phrase. Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.
The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.
God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.
There are no more thorough prudes than those who have some little secret to hide.
Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself
Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.
I'm not full of virtues and noble qualities. I love, but I love strongly, exclusive, stedfasty.
The most honest of men is the one who thinks and acts best, but the most powerful is the one who writes and speaks best.
There is only one happiness in life -- to love and to be loved.
Admiration and familiarity are strangers.
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
When they are among us cats are angels
The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.
Then she had doubts about the reality of her situation and wondered if her imminent departure was not the illusion of a dream.
No place is ugly to those who understand the virtues and sweetness of everything that God has made.
God has written in the law of nature that when two people are joined in love or friendship, one must always give his heart more perfectly than the other.
And I refused to make any sacrifices; for nothing on earth seemed more valuable than my peace of mind, my pleasure and my acclaim.
