“Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark
“We should employ our passions in the service of life, not spend life in the service of our passions.
“Old age: A great sense of calm and freedom. When the passions have relaxed their hold, you may have escaped, not from one master but from many.
“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever
“There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
“Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.
“Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low
“O, there is nothing holier, in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love, -- the first fluttering of its silken wings.
“Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love
“My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?
“Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence