“The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature.”
“It has never been matter of wonder to me that human resolutions are liable to change; one passion gives them birth, another may destroy them.”
“May your criminal enjoyments vanish as a shadow! may your ill-gotten wealth leave you without a resource; and may you yourself remain alone and deserted, to learn the vanity of these things, which now divert you from better pursuits!”
“There is nothing more glorious—nothing that does more honour to true virtue, than the confidence with which one approaches a friend of tried integrity.”
“The girl arrived; I thought her handsome; and as I doubted not that you would be mortified by my absence, I did most sincerely hope that she would be able to dissipate something of your ennui: for it is the fidelity of the heart alone that I value.”
“Some say that Love, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies.”
“Love! love!.. thou art never to be reconciled with discretion!”
“De la manière dont nous sommes faits, il est certain que notre félicité consiste dans le plaisir ; je défie qu'on s'en forme une autre idée ; or le cœur n'a pas besoin de se consulter longtemps pour sentir que, de tous les plaisirs, les plus doux sont ceux de l'amour.”
“on ne ferait pas une divinité de l'amour, s'il n'opérait souvent des prodiges.”
“Pour moi, qui n'ai que de l'amour et de la constance à offrir les femmes méprisent ma misère et font leur jouet de ma simplicité. J'ajoutai”
“Ah ! les expressions ne rendent jamais qu'à demi les sentiments du cœur.”
“I was horror-stricken at the contrast between the serenity of but a few moments ago and the wild stirrings of desire I could already feel within me. l was shuddering as you do when you find yourself alone at night on some desolate moorland, when all familiar bearings are lost and a panic fear comes over you that you can dispel only by calmly studying all the landmarks”
“I swear that you are the idol of my heart, my dear Chevalier, and there is nobody in the world I love as I love you. But don't you see, my poor darling, that loyalty is a silly virtue in the pass we are in? Do you really think we can love each other with nothing to eat? one fine day, Hunger would lead me into some fatal mistake and thinking I was sign for love, I should really be drawing my last breath”
“The fidelity I expect of you is that of the heart”
“If citizens followed their leaders' example throughout history, the human race would have died out centuries ago.”
“Yet we always envy others, comparing our shadows to their sunlit sides.”
“Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.”
“Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart - one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?”
“But the most important thing I know is that I want the possibility of you more than the reality of [her].”
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