A man speaks of what he knows, a woman of what pleases her: the one requires knowledge, the other taste.

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.

There is no folly of which a man who is not a fool cannot get rid except vanity; of this nothing cures a man except experience of its bad consequences, if indeed anything can cure it.

She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces... But I loved her

The strength of the people is effective only if it is concentrated; it evaporates and is lost when it is dispersed, just as gunpowder scattered on the ground ignites only grain by grain.

Taste is, so to speak, the microscope of the judgment.

By doing good we become good.