“Hatred is the vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their littleness, and make it the pretext of base tyrannies.”

“Though the human heart may have to pause for rest when climbing the heights of affection it rarely stops on the slippery slope of hatred.”

“Of necessity she went further in aversion than she had gone in love, for her hatred was not in proportion to her love but to her disappointed hopes.”

“The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.”

“Surely a man must be in a parlours state to excite pity, extremely weak to inspire sympathy, or very evil-looking to make a soul tremble in a den like this, where pain must hold its tongue, poverty remain cheerful, and despair retain its self respect.”

“To that point, he had always found the vicomtesse overflowing with friendly politeness, that sweet-flowing grace conferred by an aristocratic education, and which is never truly there unless it comes, automatically and unthinkingly, straight from the heart.[...]For anyone who had learned the social code, and Rastignac had absorbed it all in a flash, these words, that gesture, that look, that inflection in her voice, summed up all there was to know about the nature and the ways of men and women of her class. He was vividly aware of the iron hand underneath the velvet glove; the personality, and especially the self-centeredness, under the polished manners; the plain hard wood, under all the varnish. [...] Eugène had been entirely too quick to take this woman's word for her own kindness. Like all those who cannot help themselves, he had signed on the dotted line, accepting the delightful contract binding both benefactor and recipient, the very first clause of which makes clear that, as between noble souls, perfect equality must be forever maintained. Beneficience, which ties people together, is a heavenly passion, but a thoroughly misunderstood one, and quite as scarce as true love. Both stem from the lavish nature of great souls.”

“A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love.”