Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

Isn't it better to have men being ungrateful than to miss a chance to do good?

My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.

Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!