Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be woman. Much of her grace is in her frailty.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
To love beauty is to see light.
To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.
I put a Phrygian cap on the old dictionary.
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
The little people must be sacred to the big ones, and it is from the rights of the weak that the duty of the strong is comprised.
Smallness in a great man seems smaller by its disproportion with all the rest.
Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery.
Men become accustomed to poison by degrees.
Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left.
Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.
The omnipotence of evil has never resulted in anything but fruitless efforts. Our thoughts always escape from whoever tries to smother them.
The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
It is from books that wise people derive consolation in the troubles of life.
To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer.
It is often necessary to know how to obey a woman in order sometimes to have the right to command her.
Son, brother, father, lover, friend. There is room in the heart for all the affections, as there is room in heaven for all the stars.
Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.
Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night.
Love that is not jealous is neither true nor pure.
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.
I love all men who think, even those who think otherwise than myself.
When liberty returns, I will return.
A great artist is a great man in a great child.
Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.
To contemplate is to look at shadows.
Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.
Do not let it be your aim to be something, but to be someone.
Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?
No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.