"A life whose beginning we do not remember, and whose end we do not know."

“In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a Jew, so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all...”

“Folly is as great as the sea, it will compass anything.”

“For human nature is strange: the less we are inclined to self-sacrifice, the more we insist on it in others.”

“Pity is an emotion equally unpleasant to the bestower as to the recipient.”

“Nature has done well and wisely, in not permitting a man to live forever and in bringing into the world ever new generations. An old person is a used-up machine has too many dogmas to easily believe in a new truth ; too many sympathies and antipathies for him to come to love something unfamiliar; too many habits to be able to settle on new ways. Let us add suspiciousness — the fruit of bitter experiences; a pessimism inseparable from all manner of disappointments; and finally, a general decline of powers from exhaustion .”