You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare!

There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas.

There is not a thing that is more positive than bread.

Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.