Two things, almost incompatible, are united in me in a manner which I am unable to understand: a very ardent temperament, lively and tumultuous passions, and, at the same time, slowly developed and confused ideas, which never present themselves until it is too late. One might say that my heart and my mind do not belong to the same person.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

The empire of woman is an empire of softness, of address, of complacency. Her commands are caresses, her menaces are tears.

I loved too sincerely, too completely, I venture to say, to be able to be happy easily.

To live is not breathing it is action.

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.

People in their natural state are basically good. But this natural innocence,however, is corrupted by the evils of society.