Stupidity talks, vanity acts.

God has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two.

Short as life is, we make it still shorter by the careless waste of time.

Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.

Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.

You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.

Love is like a tree, it grows of its own accord, it puts down deep roots into our whole being.