The jostling of young minds against each other has this wonderful attribute, that one can never foresee the spark, nor predict the flash. What will spring up in a moment? Nobody knows.

There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven; there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the conscience.

The spirit of God, like the sun, always gives all its light at once. The spirit of man resembles the pale moon, which has its phases, its absences and its returns, its lucidity and its spots, its fullness and its disappearance, which borrows all its light from the rays of the sun, and which still dares to intercept them on occasion.

When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.

People weighed down with troubles do not look back; they know only too well that misfortune stalks them.

The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.

To be a saint is the exception; to be a just person is the rule. Err, stumble, commit sin, but be one of the just.