The manner in which the hours of freedom are spent determines, no less than labor and war, the moral worth of a nation.

Sacrifice may be a flower that virtue will pluck on its road, but it was not to gather this flower that virtue set forth on its travels.

Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.

To be happy is only to have freed one's soul from the unrest of unhappiness.

Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.

All mothers are rich when they love their children. There are no poor mothers, no ugly ones, no old ones. Their love is always the most beautiful of joys.

Most creatures have a vague belief that a very precarious hazard, a kind of transparent membrane, divides death from love; and that the profound idea of nature demands that the giver of life should die at the moment of giving.