Our reason may prove what it will: our reason is only a feeble ray that has issued from Nature.

To have known how to change the past into a few saddened smiles-is this not to master the future?

The decent moderation of today will be the least of human things tomorrow. At the time of the Spanish Inquisition, the opinion of good sense and of the good medium was certainly that people ought not to burn too large a number of heretics; extreme and unreasonable opinion obviously demanded that they should burn none at all.

The living are just the dead on holiday

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.

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard the past.

He who sees without loving is only straining his eyes in the darkness.