It is easier to make a lady of a peasant-girl than a peasant-girl of a lady.

A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world.

What of us lies in the hearts of others is our truest and deepest self.

The working of revolutions misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.

The savage who loves himself, his wife and child with quiet joy and glows with limited activity of his tribe as for his own life is in my opinion a more real being than that cultivated shadow who is enraptured with the shadow of the whole species

Thus we build on the ice, thus we write on the waves of the sea; the waves roaring pass away, the ice melts, and away goes our palace, like our thoughts.

Man is a central creature between the animals, that is to say, the most perfect form, which unites the traits of all in the most complete epitome.