The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

Slaves lose everything in their chains, even the desire of escaping from them.

Innocence is ashamed of nothing.

Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.

Men, in general, are not this or that, they are what they are made to be.

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

I believed that I was approaching the end of my days without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted...without having ever tasted that passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed. ...The impossibility of attaining the real persons precipitated me into the land of chimeras; and seeing nothing that existed worthy of my exalted feelings, I fostered them in an ideal world which my creative imagination soon peopled with beings after my own heart.