For there are two distinct sorts of ideas: Those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.

I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —

I have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he said he to me, ‘Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?’ I replied, ‘Listen, I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.

Unfortunates, who ought to begin with God, do not have any hope in him till they have exhausted all other means of deliverance.

The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.

True love always makes a man better, no matter who the woman is that inspires it.

There are some situations which men understand by instinct, by which reason is powerless to explain; in such cases the greatest poet is he who gives utterance to the most natural and vehement outburst of sorrow. Those who hear the bitter cry are as much impressed as if they listened to an entire poem, and when th sufferer is sincere they are right in regarding his outburst as sublime.