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.

[On Napoleon:] One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one's ears when one is near that man.

The study of history, it seems to me, leads to the conviction that all important events tend toward the same end - the civilization of mankind.

How true it is that, sooner or later, the' most rebellious must bow beneath the yoke of misfortune!

in Italy, almost at every step, history and poetry add to the graces of nature, sweeten the memory of the past, and seem to preserve it in eternal youth.

Anything that happens gradually is always irrevocable.