Consolation indiscreetly pressed upon us, when we are suffering undue affliction, only serves to increase our pain, and to render our grief more poignant.

That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.

God made me and broke the mold.

A man says what he knows, a woman says what will please.

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.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.