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

I am like a mariner born and bred on board a buccaneer brig whose soul has become so inured to storm and strife that if cast ashore he would weary and languish no matter how alluring the shady groves and how bright the gentle sun.

My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.

my love had grown one with my soul; it became darker, but did not go out

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.

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

One should never spurn a penitent criminal: in his despair he may become twice as much a criminal as before.