The convent is supreme egotism resulting in supreme self-denial.

To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts.

The smaller it is the heart, more hatred houses.

Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.

Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances.

True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.

Death belongs to God alone; by what right do men touch that unknown thing?