Vulgar souls look hastily and superficially at the sea and accuse it of monotony; other more privileged beings could spend a lifetime admiring it and discovering new and changing phenomena that delight them. So it is with love.
Nothing can afford a woman greater pleasure than to hear tender words of love. The strictest, most devout woman will listen even if she must not answer.
There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scales the fall of an empire of fourteen years and the dropping of a woman's glove, and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire.
Beauty is the greatest of human powers. Any power without counterbalance or control becomes autocratic and leads to abuse and to folly. Despotism in a government is insanity; in woman, fantasy.
Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.