What people call the spirit of the times is mostly their own spirit in which the times mirror themselves.

There is no remedy but love for the great superiority of others

All one needs to do is declare oneself free and one will immediately feel dependent. If you dare to declare yourself dependent, you feel independent.

The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.

Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men.

A wife is a gift bestowed upon a man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise.