Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers.

If I should die, I have left no immortal work behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence.

To the very last, he [Napoleon] had a kind of idea; that, namely, of la carrière ouverte aux talents, - the tools to him that can handle them.

Health is my expected heaven.

For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.

I scarcely remember counting upon happiness—I look not for it if it be not in the present hour—nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.