For Pastrasche was their alpha and omega; their treasury and granary; their store of gold and wand of wealth; their bread-winner and minister; their only friend and comforter. ... Pastrasche was their dog.

Petty laws breed great crimes.

In its permission to man to render subject to him all other living creatures of the earth, it continued the cruelty of the barbarian and the pagan, and endowed these with what appeared a divine authority.

The heart of silver falls ever into the hands of brass. The sensitive herb is eaten as grass by the swine.

Youth without faith is a day without sun.

for what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.