How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.
The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.
Happy the land where the writers are sad, the merchants satisfied, the rich melancholic, and the populace content.
[To Bonaparte, when asked why she meddled in politics:] Sire, when women have their heads cut off, it is but just they should know the reason.
Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.
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.