There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

All that was neither a city, nor a church, nor a river, nor color, nor light, nor shadow: it was reverie. For a long time, I remained motionless, letting myself be penetrated gently by this unspeakable ensemble, by the serenity of the sky and the melancholy of the moment. I do not know what was going on in my mind, and I could not express it; it was one of those ineffable moments when one feels something in himself which is going to sleep and something which is awakening.

The peculiarity of sunrise is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the night, and our laugh is always proportioned to the fear we have had.

Freedom begins where it ends ignorance.

What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold.

Morality is truth in full bloom.

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.