"The first lover is kept a long..." - Quote by Francois De La Rochefoucauld

“Humility is often only a feigned submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride.”

“People that are conceited of their own merit take pride in being unfortunate, that themselves and others may think them considerable enough to be the envy and the mark of fortune.”

“The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again.”

“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!”

“She couldn’t read his expression. As he started toward her, she recalled the way he’d seemed to glide through the sand the first time she’d ever seen him; she remembered their kiss on the boat dock the night of his sister’s wedding. And she heard again the words she’d said to him on the day they’d said good-bye. She was besieged by a storm of conflicting emotions—desire, regret, longing, fear, grief, love. There was so much to say, yet what could they really begin to say in this awkward setting and with so much time already passed?”

“The qualities which a man seeks in his beloved are those characteristics of his own soul, whether he knows it or not.”

“You know I have loved him always. But we are very poor. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden.”

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

“Love is what you make it and who you make it with.”