“The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.”

“La tyrannie de l'opinion, et quelle opinion! est aussi bête dans les petites villes de France, qu'aux États-Unis d'Amérique.”

“Monfleury est en vente, je perds cinquante mille francs, s'il le faut, mais je suis tout joyeux, je quitte cet enfer d'hypocrisie et de tracasseries. Je vais chercher la solitude et la paix champêtre au seul lieu où elles existent en France, dans un quatrième étage donnant sur les Champs-Élysées.”

“A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love”

“In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural.”

“Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?”

“A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.”