One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.

He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.

...and since, human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars

When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant.

What baffled him was that there should be all this fuss about something so simple as love.

Everything measurable passes, everything that can be counted has an end. Only three things are infinite: the sky in its stars, the sea in its drops of water, and the heart in its tears.