The life of great geniuses is nothing but a sublime storm.

Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.

The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling.

Unrequited love is as different from the mutual love as the error from the truth.

... when we are misunderstood it is always our own fault. What the reader wants most of all is to be able to grasp what we think; but you loftily refuse to comply.

The marriage vow is an absurdity imposed by society.

Discouragement seizes us only when we can no longer count on chance.