I dislike wealth and prosperity, especially that of other men.

It is often our best friends who throw us down.

If the infinite had no me, then me would be its limit. It would not be the infinite, therefore it would not be.

All who suffer are full of hatred; all who live drag a remorse: the dead alone have broken their chains.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

As for the author, he is profoundly unaware of what the classical or romantic genre might consist of.... In literature, as in allthings, there is only the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false.

What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.