“Love is the most selfish of all the passions.”

“What I’ve loved most after you, is myself: that is, my dignity and that strength which made me superior to other men. That Strength was my life. You’ve broken it with a word, so I must die.”

“Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little world of interests, composed of stormy passions and conflicting atoms”

“I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.”

“We’ll go where the air is pure, where all sounds are soothing, where, no matter how proud one may be, one feels humble and finds oneself small- in short, we’ll go to the sea. I love the sea as one loves a mistress and I long for her when I haven’t seen her for some time”

“......When one loves, one is only too ready to believe one's love returned.”

“I have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I replied, ‘Listen, I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.”