Obstinacy is will asserting itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a reasonable motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for that of reason and conscience.

The obscure only exists that it may cease to exist. In it lies the opportunity of all victory and all progress. Whether it call itself fatality, death, night, or matter, it is the pedestal of life, of light, of liberty and the spirit. For it represents resistance -- that is to say, the fulcrum of all activity, the occasion for its development and its triumph.

At bottom, everything depends upon the presence or absence of one single element in the soul - HOPE

Before crime is committed conscience must be corrupted, and every bad man who succeeds in reaching a high point of wickedness begins with this.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

A musical theme once exhausted, finds its due refuge and repose in silence.

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.