The vague torment of ... ambition.

How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!

An entire lifetime would not be long enough for you to exhaust the glance of the young harvest-girl.

I do not despair in the least of ultimate triumph. I repeat it with intense conviction.

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.