The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things.

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

Does not any limit imposed upon one inspire a desire to go beyond it? Does not our keenest suffering arise when our free will is crossed?

Let passion reach a catastrophe and it submits us to an intoxicating force far more powerful than the niggardly irritation of wine or of opium. The lucidity our ideas then achieve, and the delicacy of our overly exalted sensations, produce the strangest and most unexpected effects.

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.

Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.

In painting, you can suddenly come upon something so huge that no-one can deal with it.