"She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her."

"Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more."

"Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people."

“A noble heart should not belie its thoughts; it wants to reveal itself even to its inmost depths. There everything is good, at least everything is human.”

“What hits you affects you and wakes you up more then what pleases you.”

"I cannot provide the reality of events, I can only convey their shadow."

"L'amore come la febbre, nasce e si spegne senza che la volont vi abbia la pi piccola parte."

"The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent."

"They can only touch the heart by bruising it."

"Want of exercise was beginning to affect his health and to give him the weak and excitable character of a young German student."

"The suspicion that a rival is loved is painful enough already, but to have the love that he inspires in her confessed to one in detail by the woman whom one adores is without doubt the acme of suffering."

"Prestige! Sir, is it nothing? To be revered by fools, gaped at by children, envied by the rich and scorned by the wise."

"It seemed to Julian that there was far too much hair in his wig."

"To write a book is to risk being shot at in public."

"A girl of sixteen had a complexion like a rose, and she put on rouge."

"I will never demean myself to speak about my courage," said Julien, coldly, "it would be mean to do so. Let the world judge by the facts."

"A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul."

"A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul."

"It was the destiny of Napoleon - would it one day be his?"

"Julien felt himself to be strong and resolute like a man who sees clearly into his own heart."

"If you think of paying court to those in power, your eternal ruin is assured."

"Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will"

"Am trăit ndeajuns ca să văd că deosebirea dă naştere la ură."

"...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds."