Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time.

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

The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.

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.

The life of famous men was more glorious in antiquity; the life of obscure men is happier with the moderns.

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.

[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.