Silence is like nightfall. Objects are lost in it insensibly.

The Christian's God is a God of metamorphoses. You cast grief into his bosom: you draw thence, peace. You cast in despair: 'tis hope that rises to the surface. It is a sinner whose heart he moves. It is a saint who returns him thanks.

A friendship will be young after the lapse of half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months.

We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us.

We are all of us, in this world, more or less like St. January, whom the inhabitants of Naples worship one day, and pelt with baked apples the next.

Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones.

Faith, amid the disorders of a sinful life, is like the lamp burning in an ancient tomb.