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.

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

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.

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.

Have you not observed that faith is generally strongest in those whose character may be called the weakest?

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.