In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read.

The use of torture is contrary to sound judgment and common sense. Humanity itself cries out against it, and demands it to be utterly abolished.

The trouble is that my heart is loath to be without love even for a single hour. ... If you want to keep me forever, then show as much friendship as love, and more than anything else, love me and tell me the truth.

Praise is the only gift for which people are really grateful. Marguerite, Countess of Blessington I praise loudly; I blame softly.

Any man who doesn't partake in cigar smoking is nothing more than a weak-willed, meandering oaf, and I would never put my lips to those of any creature, man or beast, whose lips were not fresh awash in the currents of cigar smoke.'

I do not love strife, because I have always found that in the end each remains of the same opinion.

Experience shows that the frequent use of severe punishment has never rendered a people better. The death of a criminal is a less effective means of restraining crimes than the permanent example of a man deprived of his liberty during the whole of his life to make amends for the injury he has done to the public.