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.

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.

women have no existence except in love; the history of their life begins and ends with love!

The sight of such a monument is like continual and stationary music, which one hears for one's good as one approaches it.

The world is the work of a single thought, expressed in a thousand different ways.

The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies 'God in us.'

[On Russia:] In every way, there is something gigantic about this people: ordinary dimensions have no applications whatever to it. I do not mean by this that true greatness and stability are never met with; but their boldness, their imaginativeness knows no bounds. With them everything is colossal rather than well-proportioned, audacious rather than well-considered, and if they do not attain their goals, it is because they exceed them.