Quotes from George Sand

God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.

It is warm, I am alive, I am calm and sad, I hardly know why. In this existence so even, so tranquil, and so gentle as I have here, I am in an element that weakens me morally while strengthening me physically; and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy. It seems to me that all those I love forget me, and that it is justice, because I live a selfish life having nothing to do for any one of them.

There are no more thorough prudes than those who have some little secret to hide.

I'm beginning to believe that there are angels disguised as men who pass themselves off as such and who inhabit the earth for a while to console and lift up with them toward heaven the poor, exhausted and saddened souls who were ready to perish here below.

Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.

The most honest of men is the one who thinks and acts best, but the most powerful is the one who writes and speaks best.

I'm not full of virtues and noble qualities. I love, but I love strongly, exclusive, stedfasty.

A day will come when everything in my life will be changed, when I shall do good to others, when some one will love me, when I shall give my whole heart to the man whi gives ne his; neanwhile, U will suffer in silence and keep my love as a reward for him who shall set me free.

Le vrai est trop simple, il faut y arriver toujours par le compliqué." ("The truth is too simple: one must always get there by a complicated route.") [Letter to Armand Barbès, 12 May 1867]

Guard within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness; know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of those you love, the happiness that may be wanting to yourself.

It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. On the contrary, one climbs higher and higher with the advancing years, and that, too, with surprising strides.

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.

A man is not a wall, whose stones are crushed upon the road; or a pipe, whose fragments are thrown away at a street corner. The fragments of an intellect are always good.

The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.

Believe in no other God than the one who insists on justice and equality among men.

The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.

Learned women are ridiculed because they put to shame unlearned men.

Every historian discloses a new horizon.

He who draws noble delights from the sentiment of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

Where love is absent there can be no woman.

No religion can be built on force.

Admiration and familiarity are strangers.

Years do not always make age.