Purity of mind and conduct is the first glory of a woman.

Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.

[To Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled in politics:] Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason.

There is no reality on this earth except religion and the power of love; all the rest is even more fugitive than life itself.

Prayer is the life of the soul.

How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.

It seems to me that we become more dear one to the other, in together admiring works of art, which speak to the soul by their true grandeur.