Of necessity she went further in aversion than she had gone in love, for her hatred was not in proportion to her love but to her disappointed hopes. - Honoré de Balzac

Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections for their daydreams, and put their trust in him.

To kill a relative of whom you are tired, is something; but to inherit his property afterwards — that is a real pleasure!

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.