Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.

When everything has its proper place in our minds, we are able to stand in equilibrium with the rest of the world.

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary - they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.

Righteous ends, thus approved, absolve of guilt the most violent means.

War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.

To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also - He above all - is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.