The memories which come to us through music are not accompanied by any regrets; for a moment music gives us back the pleasures it retraces, and we feel them again rather than recollect them.

That past which is so presumptuously brought forward as a precedent for the present, was itself founded on some past that went before it.

O memory, thou bitter sweet,--both a joy and a scourge!

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.

Life often seems like a long shipwreck of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love. - The shores of existence are strewn with them.

A man must know how to fly in the face of opinion; a woman to submit to it.

Every time a new nation, America or Russia for instance, advances toward civilization, the human race perfects itself; every time an inferior class emerges from enslavement and degradation, the human race again perfects itself.