The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.

To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.

What unknown seas of feeling lie in man, and will from time to time break through!

The person who cannot laugh is not only ready for treason, and deceptions, their whole life is already a treason and deception.

Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie.

A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.