A youth's love is the more passionate; virgin love is the more idolatrous.

When the moon, after covering herself with darkness as in sorrow, at last throws off the garments of her widowhood, she does not at once expose herself impudently to the public gaze; but for a time remains veiled in a transparent cloud, till she gradually acquires courage to endure the looks and admiration of beholders.

The body too has its rights; and it will have them: they cannot be trampled on without peril. The body ought to be the soul's best friend. Many good men however have neglected to make it such: so it has become a fiend and has plagued them.

There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses, as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a perfumer's shop.

In the moment of our creation we receive the stamp of our individuality; and much of life is spent in rubbing off or defacing the impression.

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law.