Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.

Life teaches much, but to all thinking persons it brings ever closer the will of God - not because their faculties decline, but on the contrary, because they increase.

Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power.

The people are as severe toward the clergy as toward women; they want to see absolute devotion to duty from both.

Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished.

Love is above the laws, above the opinion of men; it is the truth, the flame, the pure element, the primary idea of the moral world.

The universe is in France; outside it, there is nothing.