The most beautiful landscapes in the world, if they evoke no memory, if they bear no trace of a remarkable event, are uninteresting compared to historic landscapes.

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?

I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.

When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer.

Nature, who permits no two leaves to be exactly alike, has given a still greater diversity to human minds. Imitation, then, is a double murder; for it deprives both copy and original of their primitive existence.

the last steps of life are ever slow and difficult.