What matters in a character is not whether one holds this or that opinion: what matters is how proudly one upholds it.
The universe is in France; outside it, there is nothing.
It is difficult to grow old gracefully.
We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
The people are as severe toward the clergy as toward women; they want to see absolute devotion to duty from both.
If one hour's work is enough to govern France, four minutes is all that is needed for Italy. There is no nation more easily frightened; even its poetic imagination predisposes it to fear, and they look upon power as on an image that fills them with terror.