A child is an angel dependent on man

There is no man who desires as passionately as a Russian. If we could imprison a Russian desire beneath a fortress, that fortress would explode.

It is not the mediocrity of women's education which makes their weakness; it is their weakness which necessarily causes their mediocrity.

To know how to wait. It is the great secret of success.

In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.

Nothing is necessary except God, and nothing is less necessary than pain.

I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.