Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.

We flew back home like swallows. 'Is it happiness that makes us so light?' Agathe asked.

To have fame follow us is well, but it is not a desirable avant-courier.

How sternly we reproach virtue for its failings, how indulgent we are to the better qualities of vice!

It's not enough to be a good person. You also have to show it.

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.