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

[Raphael's] great superiority is due to the instinctive sense which, in him, seems to desire to shatter form. Form is, in his figures, what it is in ourselves, an interpreter for the communication of ideas and sensations, an exhaustless source of poetic inspiration. Every figure is a world in itself, a portrait of which the original appeared in a sublime vision, in a flood of light, pointed to by an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which showed what the sources of expression had been in the whole past life of the subject.

The innocence of virgins is like milk which turns when exposed to a clap of thunder, to a tart smell, to a hot day, to the merest nothing.

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

Noble hearts are neither jealous nor afraid because jealousy spells doubt and fear spells pettiness.

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, forgotten because it was properly done.

I am a galley slave to pen and ink.