... the idea that 'Life' contains situations more interesting and more romantic than all the romances ever written.

... Error, by force of contrast, enhances the triumph of Truth...

When one feels oneself smitten by love for a woman, one ought to say to oneself, “What are her surroundings? What has been her life? All one’s future happiness lies in the answer.

... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.

Why did you not forget your heart also? I should never have let you have that back." ...

... the courage of one's opinions is always a form of calculating cowardice in the eyes of the 'other side'...

... rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase of anxiety, ...

She [Mme des Laumes] belonged to that half of the human race in whom the curiosity the other half feels about the people it does not know is replaced by an interest in the people it does.

One felt that in her renunciation of life she had deliberately abandoned those places in which she might at least have been able to see the man she loved, for others where he had never trod.

Presently, one after another, like shyly hopping sparrows, her friends arrived, black against the snow.

What criterion ought one to adopt to judge one's fellows? After all, there was not a single person he knew who might not, in certain circumstances, prove capable of a shameful action.

The final reward of the dead - to die no more

I keep on dreaming, but to find freedom, one must first search inwards.

Sin was conquered on the cross. [Christ’s] death is the foundation of our hope, the promise of our triumph!

Who cares who's right or wrong when the last word is a kind apology?

It hurts to be lost. You go native because it's better to be wrong than to be lost.

If I added to their pride of America, I am happy.

You can make any meal into a sandwich, and any sandwich into a meal.

The hope in literature is that we are allowed to be imperfect, to write of our imperfection, without being overly critiqued for being unlikeable.

You do what it takes. It was on me to deliver.

For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.