To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.

I have always paid attention to the merits of my enemies, and found it an advantage.

No one knows what he is doing so long as he is acting rightly; but of what is wrong one is always conscious.

Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which in every century has a different face for all that one says and does.

A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.

Legislators and revolutionaries who promise both equality and liberty are visionaries and charlatans.

Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast.