Father Goriot

What devouring kind of toil could have so shriveled him? What devouring passions had darkened that bulbous countenance, which would have seemed outrageous as a caricature? What had he been?

Indeed, the man appeared to have been one of the beasts of burden in our great social mill; one of those Parisian Ratons whom their Bertrands do not even know by sight; a pivot in the obscure machinery that disposes of misery and things unclean; one of those men, in short, at sight of whom we are prompted to remark that, "After all, we cannot

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.

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

These seven lodgers were Mme. Vauquer's spoiled children. Among them she distributed, with astronomical precision, the exact proportion of respect and attention due to the varying amounts they paid for their board.

This young misfortune was not unlike a shrub, newly planted in an uncongenial soil, where its leaves have already begun to wither.

If you set yourself to carry the heights of heaven, you must face God."

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

Perhaps there are people who know that they have nothing more to look for from those with whom they live; they have shown the emptiness of their hearts to their housemates, and in their secret selves they are conscious that they are severely judged, and that they deserve to be judged severely; but still they feel an unconquerable craving for praise