I shall not understand you, but I shall listen to you. When one hears the voices of those whom one loves, one does not need to understand the words that they utter.
I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.
That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man.
Every one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, “Do come in!” There are men who, when an incident stands half-open before them, have the same tendency to halt in indecision between two resolutions, at the risk of getting crushed through the abrupt closing of the adventure by fate. The over-prudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes incur more danger than the audacious.
In the case of first love, the soul is taken long before the body; later on, one takes the body long before the soul; sometimes one does not take the soul at all.
Books are cold but safe friends.
People arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs!
Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves.
It is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged.
Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.
And at the same moment the same idea occurred to them both, and made her smile and him blush.
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees.
She has become marble in becoming mire.
Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully; one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one’s side at bottom.
They are majestic because they think.
To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie.
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