Oh, they loved dearly: their souls kissed, they kissed with their eyes, they were both but one single kiss.

With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches up the gaps in the structure of the universe.

From every Englishman emanates a kind of gas, the deadly choke-damp of boredom.

Society is a republic. When an individual endeavors to lift himself above his fellows, he is dragged down by the mass, either by means of ridicule or of calumny. No one shall be more virtuous or more intellectually gifted than others. Whoever, by the irresistable force of genius, rises above the common herd is certain to be ostracized by society, which will pursue him with such merciless derision and detraction that at last he will be compelled to retreat into the solitude of his thoughts.

Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but less by assimilation than by friction.

While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues.

God has given us speech in order that we may say pleasant things to our friends, and tell bitter truths to our enemies.