“I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.”

“God's only excuse is that he does not exist”

“For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who pro...”

“A novel is a mirror walking along a main road.”

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

“Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unusual way of speaking than to what she was saying. This use of the singular form, stripped of the t...”

“I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought.”

“Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that t...”

“We loved with a love that was more than love.”

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”

“Love is not the absence of logicbut logic examined and recalculatedheated and curved to fitinside the contours of the heart”