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

The pursuit of politics is religion, morality, and poetry all in one.

One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.

Tombs decked by the arts can scarcely represent death as a formidable enemy; we do not, indeed, like the ancients, carve sports and dances in the sarcophagus, but thought is diverted from the bier by works that tell of immortality, even from the altar of death.

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

The greater part of what women write about women is mere sycophancy to man.

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.