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

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.

One day they asked Mme Montcortin what love is, she answered, "It's a nasty, dirty thing, of which chambermaids are sometimes accused, and, when they're convinced, they are chased."

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.