One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.

If I meet the Christian Deity, I am lost: He is a tyrant and as such, is full of ideas of vengeance; His Bible speaks of nothing but fearful punishments. I never loved Him! I could never even believe that anyone did love Him sincerely. He is devoid of pity.... He will punish me in some abominable manner.

Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.

For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?

It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.

...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.