L'amour a toujours été pour moi la plus grande des affaires ou plutôt la seule. - Stendhal

Sans travail, le vaisseau de la vie humaine n'a point de lest.

I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered. And besides, good society usurps its privileges. It had in the past the privilege of judging what was proper, but now that it supposes itself to be attacked, it condemns not what is irredemably coarse and disagreeable, but what it thinks harmful to its interest.

La vida de un hombre era resultado de una serie complicada de casualidades; hoy, la civilización ha desterrado a la casualidad, ha sepultado lo imprevisto.