Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot

"Women are always true, even in the midst of their greatest falsities, because they are always influenced by some natural feeling."

"However gross a man may be, the minute he expresses a strong and genuine affection, some inner secretion alters his features, animates his gestures, and colors his voice. The stupidest man will often, under the stress of passion, achieve heights of eloquence, in thought if not in language, and seem to move in some luminous sphere. Goriot's voice and gesture had at this moment the power of communication that characterizes the great actor. Are not our finer feelings the poems of the human will?"

"If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down."

"A letter is a soul, so faithful an echo of the speaking voice that to the sensitive it is among the richest treasures of love."

"Some day you will find out that there is far more happiness in another's happiness than in your own."

"Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?"