A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.

Talent is nothing but long impatience.

Love decreases when it ceases to increase.

The most disastrous times have produced the greatest minds. The purest metal comes of the most ardent furnace; the most brilliant lightning come of the darkest clouds.

Every man carries within himself a world made up of all that he has seen and loved; and it is to this world that he returns, incessantly, though he may pass through and seem to inhabit a world quite foreign to it.

Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.

The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.