[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.

We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.

When in Turkey, do as the turkeys do.

With every one, the expectation of a misfortune constitutes a dreadful, punishment. Suffering then assumes the proportions of the unknown, which is the soul's infinite.

The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.