It must require an inordinate share of vanity and presumption, too, after enjoying so much that is good and beautiful on earth, to ask the Lord for immortality in addition to it all.

Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means.

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

We know only that our entire existence is forced into new paths and disrupted, that new circumstances, new joys and new sorrows await us, and that the unknown has its uncanny attractions, alluring and at the same time anguishing.

Every period of time is a sphinx that throws itself into the abyss as soon as its riddle has been solved.

Ask me not what I have, but what I am.

All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country... and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it.