What is a great life if not a youthful idea executed by a man of mature years.

We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.

What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?

Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man.

An army is a nation within a nation, it is one of the vices of courage.