I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.

Truth is an homage that the good man pays to his own dignity.

At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake".

My bad head cannot adjust itself to the way things are.... If I want to depict spring, it has to be in wintertime; if I want to describe a beautiful landscape, I must be enclosed within walls; and I have said a hundred times that if I were put in the Bastille, there I would paint a picture of liberty.

To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.

Nature wants children to be children before men... Childhood has its own seeing, thinking and feeling.

Ah, that is a perfume in which I delight; when they roast coffee near my house, I hasten to open the door to take in all the aroma.