“We must never expect discretion in first love: it is accompanied by such excessive joy that unless the joy is allowed to overflow, it will choke you.”

“...joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.”

“...The friends we have lost do not repose under the ground...they are buried deep in our hearts. It has been thus ordained that they may always accompany us...”

“Joy to hearts which have suffered long is like the dew on the ground after a long drought; both the heart and the ground absorb that beneficent moisture falling on them, and nothing is outwardly apparant.”

“You who are in power have only the means that money produces — we who are in expectation, have those which devotion prompts.”

“Women sometimes allow you to be unfaithful to their love; they never allow you to wound their self-esteem.”

“Look, look,' cried the count, seizing the young man's hands - "look, for on my soul it is curious. Here is a man who had resigned himself to his fate, who was going to the scaffold to die - like a coward, it is true, but he was about to die without resistance. Do you know what gave him strength? - do you know what consoled him? It was, that another partook of his punishment - that another partook of his anguish - that another was to die before him. Lead two sheep to the butcher's, two oxen to the slaughterhouse, and make one of them understand that his companion will not die; the sheep will bleat for pleasure, the ox will bellow with joy. But man - man, who God created in his own image - man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, to love his neighbour - man, to whom God has given a voice to express his thoughts - what is his first cry when he hears his fellowman is saved? A blasphemy. Honour to man, this masterpiece of nature, this king of the creation!”