We passionately long that there may be another life in which we shall be similar to what we are here below. But we do not pause to reflect that, even without waiting for that other life, in this life, after a few years we are unfaithful to what we have been, to what we wished to remain immortally.

It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, we make our irrevocable decisions

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.

Griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some of their power to injure our heart.

Masterpieces are no more than the shipwrecked flotsam of great minds.

It is desire that engenders belief and if we fail as a rule to take this into account, it is because most of the desires that create beliefs end only with our own life.

Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.