Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.

Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.

Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows – it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.

Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age.

I go where there are no slaves, hangmen or oppressors; where faith does not kill; where the one who reigns is God.

Climate affects bipeds in the same way it does quadrupeds.

She was white, perhaps too white. Her eyes, which were almost always cast down, when she raised them testified to the purest of souls, and when she smiled, revealing her small, white teeth, one might be tempted to say that a rose is merely a plant, and ivory just an elephant's tusk.