Quotes by Paul Bourget

“At certain moments, words are nothing; it is thetone in which they are uttered.”

“Even after making up one's mind to the sacrifices Ihad decided upon, there is always left a trace of envyfor those who have triumphed in the melancholystruggle for literary supremacy”

“Flirting is the sin of the virtuous and the virtue of thesinful.”

“It is vain to try to sacrifice once for all one'syouthful ideals.”

“Unhappiness indicates wrong thinking just as ill health indicates a bad regimen.”

“One must live the way one thinks or end up thinking the way one has lived.”

“Flirting is the sin of the virtuous and the virtue of thesinful.”

“Unhappiness indicates wrong thinking just as ill health indicates a bad regimen.”

“La plus cruelle vengeance d'une femme est quelquefois de nous rester fidèle.”

“I once spoke to my aunt of the vow I had taken, the solemn promise I had made to myself that I would discover the murderer of my father, and take vengeance upon him, and she laid her hand upon my m...”

“I was suddenly carried away by rage to the point of losing all control over my frenzy. Ah! I cried, since you will not do justice on yourself, die then, at once! I stretched out my hand and seized ...”

“I seized the sheet of paper; the lines were written upon it in characters rather larger than usual. How it shook in my hand while I read these words: Forgive me, Marie. I was suffering too much. I ...”

“Was I saved? Was I lost? All depended on the moment at which somebody might go into my stepfather's room. If my mother were to return within a few minutes of my departure; if the footman were to go...”

“I had to take the necessary steps to prevent this alleged suicide from getting known, to see the commissary of police and the doctor of the dead. I had to preside at the funeral ceremonies, to rece...”

“Is there any God, any justice, is there either good or evil? None, none, none, none! There is nothing but a pitiless destiny which broods over the human race, iniquitous and blind, distributing joy...”

“You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have nei...”

“There are some surely whom you like and whom you dislike, for whom you entertain esteem and for whom you feel contempt? Have you not thought that you have some duties toward them, that you can aid ...”

“There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas, said Dorsenne to himself, when the Marquis had left him. He is like the Socialists. What vigor of mind in that old wornout machine!”

“The forests have taught man liberty.”

“There is iconoclasm in the excessively intellectual, and they delight in destroying their dearest moral or sentimental idols, the better to prove their strength.”