“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“Cruelty and fear shake hands together. An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.”

“Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.”

“A man like you is a god, not just a machine covered with skin, but a theater where fine feelings sprout and grow-and feelings are all that matters, as far as I'm concerned. Is a feeling anything but an entire world poured into a thought?”

“However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?”

“First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time.”

“The duchess turned on Eugène with one of those insolent stares that envelop a man from head to foot, flatten him out, and leave him at zero.”