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

I do not want an echo of myself from my children. I do not want to hear from them merely the reverberation of my own voice.

I desire no other proof of Christianity than the Lord's Prayer.

Men do not change; they unmask themselves.

A Gothic building engenders true religion ... The light, falling through colored glass, the singular forms of the architecture, unite to give a silent image of that infinite mystery which the soul for ever feels, and never comprehends.

Society develops wit, but its contemplation alone forms genius.

[Ridicule] laughs at all those who see the earnestness of life and who still believe in true feelings and in serious thought ... It soils the hope of youth. Only shameless vice is above its reach.