Brave old-flowers! Wall-flowers, Gilly flowers, Stocks! For even as the field-flowers, from which a trifle, a ray of beauty, a drop of perfume, divides them, they have charming names, the softest in the language; and each of them, like tiny, art-less ex-votos, or like medals bestowed by the gratitude of men, proudly bears three or four.

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.

It is death that is the guide of our life, and our life has no goal but death.

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 true sage is not he who sees, but he who, seeing the furthest, has the deepest love for mankind.

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.