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.

Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.

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

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.

Men have made of fortune an all-powerful goddess, in order that she may be made responsible for all their blunder's.

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

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