So rapid is the flight of our dreams upon the wings of imagination.

I am strong against everything, except against the death of those I love. He who dies gains; he who sees others die loses.

In this world, all--men, women, and kings--must live for the present. We can only live for the future for God

Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.

That is a dream also; only he has remained asleep, while you have awakened; and who knows which of you is the most fortunate?

Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy

What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.