Many a calm river begins as a turbulent waterfall, yet none hurtles and foams all the way to the sea.

I have a congenital desire to contradict; my whole life is merely a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions to heart and mind. When faced with enthusiasm, I am seized by a midwinter freeze, and I suppose that frequent dealings with sluggish phlegmatics would have made a passionate dreamer.

I was born, so that the whole world could be a spectatorOf my triumph or my doom.

Afraid of decision, I buried my finer feelings in the depths of my heart and they died there.

A strange thing, the human heart in general, and woman's heart in particular.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!