The arts are good and providential in that they allow the soul to imitate the movements of love, and to feel love without its being returned - which, perhaps, is the only way of feeling it permanently.

The affairs of the royal house form a subject of conversation for those who, as a rule, would have no conversation.

The birth of love is always accompanied by the idea of solitude. A single being appears, and the rest of the world grows empty.

collections are amusing only in the making; afterwards they are like sporting prints without the sport. The sons of collectors inherit only the corpse of their fathers' satisfied passion.

Words express only the feelings we know already.

marriage was a calamity, but it was not an occupation.

that sunlight of the dead which is called literature.