As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.

I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not altogether unmingled with fear!

[we see that] science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.

Liberty is worth paying for.

But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this staggers the mind!

When I returned to partial life my face was wet with tears. How long that state of insensibility had lasted I cannot say. I had no means now of taking account of time. Never was solitude equal to this, never had any living being been so utterly forsaken.

Reality provides us with facts so romantic that imagination itself could add nothing to them.