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)

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

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

Modesty and dew love the shade.

Sentiment is the poetry of the imagination.

A woman's strength is most potent when robed in gentleness.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.