Vulgar souls look hastily and superficially at the sea and accuse it of monotony; other more privileged beings could spend a lifetime admiring it and discovering new and changing phenomena that delight them. So it is with love.

A naked woman is less dangerous than one who spreads her skirt skillfully to cover and exhibit everything at once.

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.

Women, perhaps even require a little hypocrisy.

Intuition, like the rays of the sun, acts only in an inflexibly straight line; it can guess right only on condition of never diverting its gaze; the freaks of chance disturb it.

We must have books for recreation and entertainment, as well as books for instruction and for business; the former are agreeable, the latter useful, and the human mind requires both. The cannon law and the codes of Justinian shall have due honor, and reign at the universities; but Homer and Virgil need not therefore be banished. We will cultivate the olive and the vine, but without eradicating the myrtle and the rose.

Your modest savant smiles as he says to his admirers: What have I done? Nothing. Man does not invent a force, he directs it.