Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!

I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.

Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for the guilty there is no peace.

There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. I am practically industrious - painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour - but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.