Conversation as talent exists only in France. In other countries, conversation provides politeness, discussion, and friendship; in France, it is an art for which imagination and soul are certainly very welcome, but which can also provide its own secret remedies to compensate you for the absence of either or both, if you so desire.

Genius inspires this thirst for fame: there is no blessing undesired by those to whom Heaven gave the means of winning it.

We always cut our poetical theories to suit our talent.

a perfect piece of architecture kindles that aimless reverie, which bears the soul we know not whither.

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.

One must, in one's life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.

How much past there is in a life, however brief it be.