France is revolutionary or she is nothing at all. The revolution of1789 is her political religion.

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore; it rushes on, and carries us with it.

After his blood, that which a man can next give out of himself is a tear.

It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty.

Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality.

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)

The photographer will never replace the painter; one is a man, the other a machine. Let us compare them no longer. (1848)