If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.

I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.

Often the losing of a battle leads to the winning of progress. Less glory but greater liberty: the drum is silent and the voices of reason can be heard.

Years place at last a venerable crown upon a head.

What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.

The mind's eye can nowhere find anything more dazzling or more dark than in man; it can fix itself upon nothing which is more awful, more complex, more mysterious, or more infinite. There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.