I told myself 'Everything is a being! The shout that passes into the air is an entity like an animal, since it is born, produces a movement, and is a… - Guy de Maupassant

"Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments."

[On Water]

It was one of those bitter mornings when the whole of nature is shiny, brittle, and hard, like crystal. The trees, decked out in frost, seem to have sweated ice; the earth resounds beneath one's feet; the tiniest sounds carry a long way in the dry air; the blue sky is bright as a mirror, and the sun moves through space in icy brilliance, casting on the frozen world rays which bestow no warmth upon anything.

Yet her heart did not thirst for emotions like the hearts of sentimental women; she was not searching for a man's unique love nor for the gratification of a passion. All she required was the admiration of every man she met, acknowledgment of capitulation, the homage of universal tenderness.