Father Goriot

if she had been happy, she would have been charming. Happiness is the poetry of woman, as the toilette is her tinsel.

Even so, step by step the daylight decreases, and the cicerone's droning voice grows hollower as the traveler descends into the Catacombs. The comparison holds good! Who shall say which is more ghastly, the sight of the bleached skulls or of dried-up human hearts?

A student has not much time on his hands if he sets himself to learn the repertory of every theatre, and to study the ins and outs of the labyrinth of Paris. To know its customs; to learn the language, and become familiar with the amusements of the capital, he must explore its recesses, good and bad, follow the studies that please him best, and for

It is one of the most detestable habits of a Liliputian mind to credit other people with its own malignant pettiness.

In short, there is no illusory grace left to the poverty that reigns here; it is dire, parsimonious, concentrated, threadbare poverty; as yet it has not sunk into the mire, it is only splashed by it, and though not in rags as yet, its clothing is ready to drop to pieces.

The human heart may find here and there a resting-place short of the highest height of affection, but we seldom stop in the steep, downward slope of hatred.

the struggles in which men seek to preserve their self-respect by justifying their blameworthy actions to themselves.

Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without being disheartened by it.

The little garden is no wider than the front of the house; it is shut in between the wall of the street and the partition wall of the neighboring house.