If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to where they can be brought.

Normally, people believe that, if they hear just words, that these words must lead to some thought.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.

I treat my heart like a sick child and gratify its every fancy

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

How often do I lull my seething blood to rest, for you have never seen anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as this heart.