Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me.

True art can only spring from the intimate linking of the serious and the playful.

The older I get the more I trust in the law according to which the rose and the lily bloom.

We rather confess our moral errors, faults, and crimes than our ignorance.

Nothing is more dangerous than solitude.

One is never satisfied with the portrait of a person that one knows.

The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does.