Liberty is the only idea which circulates with the human blood, in all ages, in all countries, and in all literature - liberty that is, and what cannot be separated from liberty, a love of country.

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.

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.

[Ridicule] laughs at all those who see the earnestness of life and who still believe in true feelings and in serious thought ... It soils the hope of youth. Only shameless vice is above its reach.

I must keep on rowing, not until I reach port but until I reach my grave.

Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.

What is love, if it can calculate and provide against its own decay?