Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

New doctrines ever displease the old. They like to fancy that the world has been losing wisdom, instead of gaining it, since they were young.

Unhappy love freezes all our affections: our own souls grow inexplicable to us. More than we gained while we were happy we lose by the reverse.

Poetry is the apotheosis of sentiment.

women have no existence except in love; the history of their life begins and ends with love!

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

It is obvious that the most despotic forms of social organization would be suitable for inert men who are satisfied with the situation fate has placed them in, and that the most abstract form of democratic theory would be practicable among sages guided only by their reason. The only problem is to what degree it is possible to excite or to contain the passions without endangering public happiness.