Whether a revolution succeeds or fails people of great hearts will always be sacrificed to it.

Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.

I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.

I live! Red life boils in my veins, earth yields beneath my feet, in the glow of love I embrace trees and statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of a world. I revel in the melody of her countenance, and with a single glance of my eye I can enjoy more than others with their every limb through all their lives.

The swan, like the soul of the poet, By the dull world is ill understood.

All our contemporary philosophers perhaps without knowing it are looking through eyeglasses that Baruch Spinoza polished. Spinoza was a philosopher who earned his livelihood by grinding lenses.

If one has no heart, one cannot write for the masses.