The value of ourselves is but the value of our melancholy and our disquiet.

It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.

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.

Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers?

At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along.

There is no soul that does not respond to love, for the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back.

Wisdom requires no form; her beauty must vary, as varies the beauty of flame. She is no motionless goddess, for ever couched on her throne.