Nothing inspires more courage in a woman than fearlessness in the man she loves. - Antoine François Prévost

Only experience or example can rationally determine which way the heart should incline. Now experience is not an advantage that it is open to everyone to acquire, since it depends on the various situations in which, by chance, we find ourselves. For many people, then, this leaves only example that can offer any guidance as to how they should exercise virtue.

One cannot reflect for long on moral precepts without being astonished at seeing them, at one and the same time, revered and neglected, and without wondering what could be the reason for this vagary of the human heart, whereby it clings to principles of goodness and perfection from which it deviates in practice.

The portrait I have to paint is of…an ambiguous character, a mixture of virtues and vices, a perpetual contrast between good impulses and bad actions.