Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim.

The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them.

...to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state

Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.

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